BY MIKE STEVENS
Even with a quarter century of the sportfishing industry in my rearview, there are still specific brands of fishing that are right in front of my face that I haven’t tried. Nothing quirky and unique, either. I’m not talking about trout fishing with a Tenkara rod on Hot Creek here (besides, I’ve done that, it was exhausting), but things that everyday anglers are doing all the time. I just haven’t.
In recent years, I’ve been making an effort to check some of those boxes off, and some of them are going to stick in the regular rotation.
Owens Valley bass
I’ve known of the presence of bass throughout the Owens Valley and even caught a few small ones accidentally while targeting trout, but I’ve never targeted them specifically until a couple years ago. Nick Lara at Mac’s Sporting Goods in Bishop is a local authority on the subject, and when I asked him where to go he basically said, “fish the places you are already fishing for trout, just use bass stuff.”
My first hacks came on the way up to fish Crowley Lake in October, so we hit some spots on the lower Owens River north of Lone Pine. Long story short, in about three hours of fishing, me and another guy piled up over 30 each (mixture of smallmouth and largemouth) within about a 50-yard stretch. I tipped my brother and his buddy off who were on their way up a day later, and they did the same thing.
Squarebills, creature baits, lipless cranks, plastic craws, in-line spinners and Hookup Baits all do the trick (mainly the cranks that first time), and now every trip up (3 to 5 times a year) starts with a day on the Lower O. Trout, bluegill and even the occasional catfish are also in the mix, but part of what keeps me fired up about it is thinking eventually a big-ass brown trout is going to chase down one of these bass baits and I’ll get to tussle with it on (relatively) heavy gear.
It’s a low-maintenance, easy-access blast, and while it’s not always wide open like that first time, we’ve yet to get skunked. And you can do it all winter.
Bottom grabbin’
Most of you are not missing out on filling sacks with rockfish, but I did for a long time. Fishing while cold in miles deep water with giant gear (Dacron line capacity) had zero appeal to me from when I first started saltwater fishing in the early 90s until, honestly, about 10 years ago. While the arrival of braid did the trick, I still didn’t target rockfish until I started at WON and hosting our charters at which point it was a “when in Rome” thing. So, braid had been out a while, but that was my first taste of not only bottom fishing with light gear, but being able to feel everything that was going on down there and, dare I say, having fun doing it?
The same lack of stretch that allows you to feel every pebble down there as well as whenever a fish breathes on your bait also makes every bottom
grabber you haul up feel like a big one. From the classic pre-committal tap-tap-tap that takes me back to my PowerBait roots in the Sierra, to haulin’ tasty critters on bass gear and feeling every head shake on the way up, I was a quick convert and am now on a mission to show whoever else is hibernating from salt in the winter to get in the game.
Surf slinging
Talk about low-maintenance and endless access, I’ve always had an off-and-on relationship with surf fishing, but I’m currently on and this time I think it’s going to stick. Part of the reason is, I’m now covering Southern California surf fishing for WON, and that means I’ve got an army of sources from the Mexican border up through Santa Barbara and Ventura. As a result, I’m bombed with intel on a daily basis, and I’ve detected several things that seem different since I last regularly fished from the beach: way more striped bass are caught in the surf in that zone that many people are aware of, jerkbaits have become way more prevalent (and for almost all surf species) than they ever were, and with some research, a surf angler can find spots that produce just about everything that can be caught on a half-day boat.
None of those items are unheard of, but I am finding out that the level at which each of those are going on is likely 50 to 75 percent higher than casual anglers think.
What I’m still missing out on
Twilight fishing. It’s really kind of crazy that I’ve never been on a twilight trip, especially given the fact I —someone who once wrote a column declaring the afternoon half-day “the greatest trip in all of sportfishing”— still hold half-days close to my heart. So, you’re telling me I can fish a half-day after I leave work? Sign me up!
My excitement over the prospect of twilight fishing kind of went out of control
when I was trying to convince the in-office WON staffers that we need to do a circuit
of twilight trips complete with a point system and
ultimately, a twilight angler of the year, but I was not taken seriously.
Imagine that.