El Cap is Still my favorite

Fishing Time: 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM

Weather: Sunny, calm, T-70

Moon Phase: 63% Moon

Location:  El Capitan Reservoir

Best Bait: Live shiner 

Who Went:  Dunc

El Capitan Reservoir is definitely my favorite of all the lakes I’ve fished in San Diego so far.  I think it’s because it’s similar to the reservoirs I’m used to fishing at home.  Deep water reservoir, with rock and sand shorelines.  Good underwater structure made up of points and underwater ridges.  Plus, I know it holds some monster bass! 

I skipped finding new water today and hit El Cap once again.  This time I equipped my float tube with my fish finder to help in finding some deep water bass.  I was amazed at how many I saw.  Every point, ridge, or hump, held multiple bass.  The frustrating part was they wouldn’t bite!  I would literally watch on my fish finder as they would come up and look at my live shiner and every time I thought this is the one, he’s going to bite, but then nothing. 

I covered a lot of water today including the big underwater ridge that I have been dying to fish.  However, I didn’t see many fish on the ridge, and never got a bite.  It was a bit scary to with boats flying by a little closer than I was comfortable with.  I tried another cove nearby and just as I was starting to lose hope on the day, my line started running.  I reeled in the slack, set the hook, and the fight was on.  This fish had some gusto, and after a few good runs I started to get very excited, thinking this was the fish I’ve been waiting for.  Finally, a monster bass!  It seemed like forever before it surfaced and when it did, I was looking eye to eye with a big ole blue catfish!  It was bittersweet.  The fight was awesome, and I have never caught a blue catfish, so that was very cool, but I couldn’t help being slightly disappointed with hopes of a giant bass.  I took a few mugshots of the big blue kitty cat before releasing it near my tube.  He was probably in the 8-10 pound range, so I didn’t bring him on board with me.

I continued fishing the bay and tried fishing a bit shallower to see if anything was more active, but it was the same story as deep water.  Lots of fish, but no takers.  Again, starting to lose hope, my line started running again.  I got a good hook set, but this fight didn’t fight as long.  It felt good however, to land a bass after fishing hard all day.  I took a few snapshots and let it go. I continued to fish the bay, but that was the only bass willing to bite.  Even though I didn’t catch many fish it was fun to land a big ole catfish and seeing fish all day on my finder kept me mesmerized all day long.  One of these day’s those fish will turn on and be biting.  When they do it will be a fun day.