Cachuma good/bad/and ugly!

[Kelly Ripa]

Yehaaw...I'm first out on Saturday. 6 hours later with one fish on a buzzbait...What the heck is wrong with this joint? The bad and ugly part is simple no bass to speak of. They are not where I have been catching them for 25+ years so I guess it's time to punt. I am of the opinion that they are suspended out with the offshore bait. I know of a guy who caught a 6 pound largemouth trolling leadcore with 4 colors out. I guess if you want to try... some deep cranking is more than likely the ticket. I just couldn't believe all that juicy structure isn't holding jack but it's true. The kids in the marina say it's been crappy for 3 staight months now. Not even a follow on the Huddelston! The good news is we are going to have one heck of a fishery on our hands by the looks of it. I saw something I haven't seen at Cachuma in 20 years....three inch crappie! If you have been to Cachuma these last two years we have been getting really big incidental " in my case " crappie over two pounds and I've been putting them back because we havent had any panfish since the drought in the 80's. They were wiped out along with the bluegill and we were pretty much down to brood stock when we got the March miracle. If it wasn't to big for the bass to eat they died. The three inch crappie I saw was having a little trouble so I went over and picked it off the surface and YUP! it was partially scaled from a fish trying to eat it. More interesting news was I talked to some guys who had 40 honest to god bluegill in a cooler. Not redear but 8-10 inch bluegill. Thats really good but I hope not to many folks dial them in like these guys as we really could use them. Clarks cove was shad soup. Even the grebes stopped pig'n out after 10 a.m. ....The most interesting thing from this weekend was one of the trout trollers had a....STEELHEAD! Thank god he didn't know what it was and took it home to eat...I'm sure if the powers that be knew about this we'd be dumping the lake out to save our steelhead. I think I'm just going to stay off the water for 6 more weeks! I have plenty to do around the house and I need to get ready for 10 days at Clear Lake for the nutcase event. Fishing is good at the big C right now but not if your fishing for bass. I just can't break out the worms and pick off little fish...It just doesn't interest me in the least.

Rip

[TomG]

I was out there Saturday also and only caught one small fish. You are right, places I normally could catch fish at the fish are not there.

[CharlieS.]

Lake looked great. Guess the fish want to stay there!! I know about the steelhead thing,couple years ago,my partner after the tourniment was fishing from shore and hooked one...I still didnt believe it,and I was holding the darn thing..Charlie