Casitas

[Kelly Ripa]

Phffft. I just read A report on another site that had me bringing a 4 pound fish in to the scales. I guess the 7 pound fish in the other hand was overlooked... anyway I have been able to rack up a few of these 6-7 pound fish on each trip lately and plan on doing it again 11/28....Seems like the best fish of the year from Casitas was 9 pounds or less? Is this what you get when you feed Florida strains shad instead of candy bait trout? We are at 51.5 % capacity right now which can explain some downtrends but even the big really green bright fish I caught on a crank 3 weeks ago looked like it was at it's peak...the fish I am catching now on a different pattern are all head and no weight...Put up a heck of a fight but big fish seem to be either eluding us or gone. I'm saying gone as in dead because not even the shad guys put up a big fish this year. Not complaining just saying you are what you eat I guess. See ya on the water Rip

[elfish16]

Rip... are you just now realizing that giants are gone? Biggest bass I know of caught was a 10.5lber in Spring on a swimmer. Sadly, that is it for DD's. Wonbass puts 5-6lbers as big bass weekly as whopper of the week.

[Oldschool]

I understand why the trout plants stopped, what happened to the crawdad population?
Tom

[Kelly Ripa]

I never gave up on the giants but I suppose the long term fisheries management of Casitas has finally proven their worth. I know they stocked crawdads maybe 4 years ago but just like the bluegill plant around the same time period it was most like mainly in Ayers creek. The logic being since we couldn't fish there it would replenish all we anglers kept? I know when someone moved Florida strain largemouth into Cachuma the lake record fell twice in one year....And nobody is going to see a 17+ again on that lake again either....But at Cachuma they died from lack of oxygen when the last drought buster ran the lake up 95 feet in 10 days....Casitas starved? When was the last time they electro shocked Casitas ? They used to send giants to the shows and DVL from here...Do they even have a hawg tank at the boat show anymore? ...for every step forward two steps back...Funny folks kept rushing up to me at the Bass a thon with swimbait rods and asking me what I thought about them. I told them I sold off my Big pupfish and top dollar baits to others who can use them. No sense it owning what you can't use. With Piru having Quagga's, I can't even drag my boat to Clear Lake where you can get a quagga sticker for your dog because of my zip code. Even though I got through a 35 day inspection process to have my boat on this lake it is meaningless when it comes to being able to take my boat on the road. Red flagged in a heartbeat I'm sure. So 7 pounds isn't so bad...I pray the water we get this year in beneficial and not detrimental to our common cause. Tight lines everybody

[Oldschool]

Kelly, some good news on the horizon, the trout stocking ban at Casitas has been over turned and DFW can start stocking again....within a few months? Give it 3 years and the lake should be good condition if the ecosystem is balanced and we get rain!
The bass can live 15 years in Casitas, the 7-9 lb bass need to be studied to determine age, my guess is they are pushing 8-9 years and most are healthy.
Tom

[mark poulson]

Kelly, some good news on the horizon, the trout stocking ban at Casitas has been over turned and DFW can start stocking again....within a few months? Give it 3 years and the lake should be good condition if the ecosystem is balanced and we get rain!
The bass can live 15 years in Casitas, the 7-9 lb bass need to be studied to determine age, my guess is they are pushing 8-9 years and most are healthy.
Tom

Tom,
Where did you read that?

[Oldschool]

Kelly, some good news on the horizon, the trout stocking ban at Casitas has been over turned and DFW can start stocking again....within a few months? Give it 3 years and the lake should be good condition if the ecosystem is balanced and we get rain!
The bass can live 15 years in Casitas, the 7-9 lb bass need to be studied to determine age, my guess is they are pushing 8-9 years and most are healthy.
Tom

Tom,
Where did you read that?

This weeks WON, Nov 29th.
Tom

[Kelly Ripa]

Hard to believe...Even Lopez isn't slated for trout in the coming year? I know bass can be long lived...It's sad seeing fish that weigh in at 6 1/2 pounds all head no body and then to see a healthy 7 in the same waters it's just shocking. Seems like the fish who are new to being 7 pounds have something to hope for as the rest are just hanging on. When I see trout that are less than top tier predators themselves when they enter the ecosystem( less than 2 pounds)released I will believe it. I hope they don't do the same as in the past two "stockings"and pour in $100,000 bucks worth of fish starting at 3 pounds with 1,000 dollars worth of the fish sold to them at market value per pound with fish being in excess of 15 pounds released. Kids dragging around 10 pound Nebraska tailwaker rainbow trout caught on powerbait for 5 weeks until they sunk out of the Wadeligh arm never to be seen or heard of again....Gotta be some slug rainbows in here by now. I got an 11 on a ripbait last year....Killed it and grilled it... I think Cal DFG should remember Casitas fondly as they drive by with a hatchery truck and tell the water board that they are sending them a message. Dips couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag. But we all new that as soon as they opened their mouths in public.


Better for the water board to have remained silent and be thought of as a fools than to open their mouths and remove all doubt of it. Hopefully the state is as goofed up as I think it is and they have forgotten the message our water board sent to the powers that be. And the tap to the candy bait will again be opened. I heard the same thing last year so I am at 50% on this news.

[mark poulson]

You have to remember that people elected to the water boards are either agriculture people, or politicians hoping to use it as a springboard to higher office. Either way, they are bought and paid for, or will be, by agribusiness, just like up north.

[elfish16]

Kelly, some good news on the horizon, the trout stocking ban at Casitas has been over turned and DFW can start stocking again....within a few months? Give it 3 years and the lake should be good condition if the ecosystem is balanced and we get rain!
The bass can live 15 years in Casitas, the 7-9 lb bass need to be studied to determine age, my guess is they are pushing 8-9 years and most are healthy.
Tom

I've seen this a week ago but I will believe it when that first stocking truck show up. It's a breath of fresh air if it's true. I know it's not a quick fix but in a few years it could spur those pigs to focus on swimbaits. BEST PART OF ALL, these are NEW generation fish so they aren't used to swimbaits and trout. The older baits will be GOLD!

[Dave Wilson]

Hey Tom, the stocking of Red Swamp Crayfish is stopped, I think, because they're a non-native species, AKA "exotic" species. First it was stopped due to concerns they'd be a carrier of quaggas. Pretty sure you can't get a permit for them anymore because of that. Trout maybe can be stocked again because they can guarantee the stockers won't breed with native trout, although there will probably be lawsuits because the stockers may compete for food resources, eat native frogs and etc. etc. etc. When I put in crayfish, I put thousands around the main Island- which is now the main peninsula, and thousands in Chismahoo. (as in almost 10,000 total.), but that was in about 2007 or 2008. I'm glad there's anything for the bass to eat, because adding anything else doesn't look like a sure thing.

[Oldschool]

To the best of my knowledge the Shasta crayfish is the only native species in California. The Signal crayfish was introduced in early 1900's north of lake Shasta. No crayfish species are in SoCal.
The Red Swamp crayfish has been stocked in nearly every bass lake in California since 1960, over 50 years, how could anyone consider those invasive today, they are so well established.
Pray it keeps raining!
Tom

[elfish16]

about 2 months ago these Casitas bigguns were focused on something in the lake and not going anywhere... they have adapted and are getting big as it is. I've seen crawdads running banks again at night and tons of smaller gills and crappie. these bass are doing just fine. These newer generation bass have adapted to NO trout and even without trout I'd expect DD's in a year or two as is.

bring on rain and I think this will speed up the giants coming back.

[Kelly Ripa]

Agree with that. I watched a 14 inch crappie kick the bucket the other day...spinning and stopped and floated ...pulled over and picked it up...Dead but not eaten ...guess someones eyes were bigger than their mouth... Off to a good start with the recent weather...If it would just settle in...

[mark poulson]

To the best of my knowledge the Shasta crayfish is the only native species in California. The Signal crayfish was introduced in early 1900's north of lake Shasta. No crayfish species are in SoCal.
The Red Swamp crayfish has been stocked in nearly every bass lake in California since 1960, over 50 years, how could anyone consider those invasive today, they are so well established.
Pray it keeps raining!
Tom

Tom, I don't know what species of crawdads we had, but we had crawdads in the swamps in Venice, CA, in the 50's. My next door neighbors would catch them and have crawdad pots boiling in their back yard all the time, and we'd see them when we caught pollywogs.
Those swamps are now the Penmar Golf Course, but, back then, the storm water from Santa Monica and Venice would collect in two seasonal lakes there, and the whole place was alive.

[Delaney]

I'm not at all familiar with the situation at Casitas, but I do know that the size drop off at the lake might not be due to lack of trout planting. Could it be a case of the Florida population cross breeding with northern largemouth that were already present, and the gene pool or whatever is behind this. Maybe the current population are cross breeds. Is there a way to check? Has the Florida bass pool been freshened lately? I know this has been suspected to have happened at other lakes.

[Oldschool]

Giant bass populations tend to crash from various causes, the Casitas crash was due directly to lose of planted trout that generation of bass became reliant on. Sounds strange that the giant bass couldn't adjust to the Threadfin shad population that was very healthy. The big bass starved with prey available. I didn't believe it was possible until catching a few 27"-28" starving bass.
FLMB intergrates with NLMB depletes the pure strain and can alter behavior, doesn't lead to starvation, it may reduce the size the bass can reach.
What produces giant FLMB is abundant food and shelter as a young adult bass followed by larger size prey as adults. This current generation of adult bass haven't had those conditions and my guess is the bass will top out between 11 to 13 lbs, unless the lake raises to full pool soon!
Tom
PS, we caught crayfish locally back in the 50's, have no idea where they came from?

[mark poulson]

I don't think my local swamp was stocked with Louisiana crawdads, so they must have been local.
At one time all of Venice, or a great deal of it, including what is now Marina Del Rey, was wetlands and swamps. It had the richest soil for farming anywhere. The house my folks bought after WW2 was part of a GI housing tract built on a truck farm site. You could literally throw a tomatoe out of a window and it would grow. Of course, that was back when we had enough rain for things to grow. Hahaha

I just did some online reading, and it seems you are right, Tom, the Shasta Crawfish is the only native to California, and the crawdads I saw when I was young were Louisiana reds. Since I grew up with them in our swamps I always assumed they were native, and all swamps had them.
I guess people brought them out west from Louisiana long before I was born, back in the Dark Ages. Hahaha

[Oldschool]

California has crawdads distributed state wide, they are everywhere and that was my point with Casitas.
Lake Tahoe has a crawdad population! Understand the hysteria with Quagga mussels at Castitas, the DFW should be able to locate clean crayfish to stock, it would help the prey source for several species of fish.
It appears the DFG stocked crayfish along with LMB back in the 1890's, that should qualify as "native" as the bass are.
Tom

[elfish16]

I'll tell you that I am NOT concerned with the crawdad populations in the lake one bit. When you fish tournaments YEAR round and you are constantly cleaning out crawdad parts from the livewells, they are eating well. I am starting to think these bigger bass are keyed on crusties and bigger gills/crappie to grow.

[Oldschool]

Repeat after me; there are no crawdads in the lake, there are no crawdads in the lake.....leave your jigs at home!
Tom

[mark poulson]

Repeat after me; there are no crawdads in the lake, there are no crawdads in the lake.....leave your jigs at home!
Tom

You are soooo generous to share your hard earned knowledge with us. I'm going out now and throw all my jigs away!

On the serious side, with the lake down 130'+-, do you think the crawdads in Castaic moved down with the water level?

[Oldschool]

I haven't fished Castaic in several years and don't know about the current crayfish population there.
Crawdads move down as the water drops. Castaic crawdads were smaller size than Casitas and lighter color.
There is some very good structure at the level you noted; rip rap, a few good road bed cuts and bridges, flats with ledges, should be good winter jig fishing.
Tom

[mark poulson]

I asked because, after the 2004-5 El Nino brought the lake up so fast, and then they dropped it a foot a day to 85' down for the Elderberry pipe maintenance, it seemed like the jig bite died, and hasn't been the same since.

I saw a whole bunch of ledges and humps that are now in play. It's like a whole new lake.

[Oldschool]

Striper's!

[mark poulson]

Striper's!

Last Sat. we found stripers to 5 lbs busting in one of the coves first thing. I had a finesse jerkbait tied on, and I bent out my trebles pretty good getting them unhooked. They are a blast on 8lb test and a light casting rod. Tough duty, but someone had to take one for the team. I'll have a jerkbait with a heavier gauge hook tied on tomorrow for those rascals! Hahaha

[Oldschool]

Morphed into a Castaic thread.
Rumor has it the lake will be drawn down another 40'. I hear the fish arm in silted in down to mud point and the road bed and bridge is cover under mud....that bad news.
Spoons have always been good this time of year at Castaic, don't forget them.
Tom

[mark poulson]

Thanks.