San_Diego_River_9_BG

Comment

Comment by Leo Nguyen on May 4, 2013 at 4:46pm

Looks like you tracked yourself down for a nice outing. Now, it's time for you to get into the float tube, and start your hunt for that cat fish, and its family.

Comment by JBplusThuy on May 4, 2013 at 11:01am

Thanks, Jen and Tooty. These were an unusual batch of fish. After circling and crisscrossing the "river" (the San Diego River wouldn't even pass as a creek in most parts of the country, but there are places where it widens out into ponds) fruitlessly and admitting defeat and falling back to waxworms, I found these fish were right underneath the floating mat of dead tules, cottonwood fluff, etc., that was right up against the standing tules. If I could drop the bait just at that mat, it was fish-on.

I also found that this pond (first time tubing it) seems to be quite deep. All around the pond, 8 feet from shore I couldn't touch bottom by putting my fly rod down into the water until it was lapping at the reel seat. I may need to try this again with a sinking line. Of course, I may just go with a UL spinning rod next time. Gotta probe these depths for catfish over the summer, too.  A couple miles downstream in another pond, a guy caught and released a humongous channel cat from his float tube. OK, it looked like a 10-20 pound class fish, but considering the BOW, that's humongous :-)

Jonathan

Comment by DAVID L EITUTIS on May 4, 2013 at 8:08am

Nice shot JB , pretty colors .....

Comment by Jen Nayfly on May 4, 2013 at 3:59am

Love this shot!

Comment by dick tabbert on May 3, 2013 at 10:52pm

Wow a nice mess of fish for sure. Fly rod was working overtime.

Comment by JBplusThuy on May 3, 2013 at 9:20pm

While a fly rod may be in this picture, after going until 3:00 PM without catching anything, I had to concede defeat and tie on a circle hook and break out Plan B - a tub of wax worms. The best bite was on 2 or 3 wax worms plus a meal worm. These guys were biting so lightly that even with a little foam stick-on indicator I didn't know half of them were there until stripping the line set the hook by chance.

Besides these, I lost three more: 2 off the hook, 1 break-off; the break-off came on the cast after the biggest BG. Probably should have retied after that  but I was trying to fish as fast as I could before I had to pick up the kids from school LOL.