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Got a chance to do some fishing today at Castaic Lagoon. Figured it would be nice to get up there real early for a Friday morning wake up call and beat the weekend crowd.

I opted for the Lagoon again today. I was thinking I would give the Upper Castacic a shot next time out.

Arrived at exactly 4:45 AM and made my way down around the moonflower in the dark with my lantern. Wouldn't ya know somebody was already on my favorite spot so I set up about fifty yards towards the east on the south end of the lagoon.



It was still pretty dark and there was a half moon almost at it's zenith overhead. Good enough to cast a pretty decent shadow. Man I just love getting to the lake early like this. Some may get tired of seeing my usual early morning photos but I never get tired of taking them.

Water temp was 68, air temp was 62. When I left my house the barometer was at 29.75 and had fallen slightly during the night. Moon was approx. half

Started out casting out the large trout swimbaits in the dark. It sounds great when that thing hits the water so far out there you can hardly see it. My anticipation and adrenaline level starts going through the ceiling as I slowly wind that big Castaic Platinum swimmer back real slow just under the surface.

The whole time I'm just completely on edge waiting for some monster bass to wake up out of the deeps and slam that thing so hard it almost pulls me into the water.

No dice on the swimmers today, the light started to come up and I switched over to dropshot worms. This is a view north across the Lagoon of Castaic Dam.



For those not familiar with Castaic and the Lagoon I've included this little locator. I was fishing in the area around where the red spot is at the south end of the Lagoon.


After a while rotating through various dropshot plastics I finally got a bite on the Zoom Tiny Fluke watermellon but farmed the fish. Just never got a hook on it.

Switched off the dropshots after seeing some action on the top a went for the topwater with a popper in baby bass pattern. I was fishing this with a right hand retrieve Abu 5000 baitcaster on Shakespeare Sigma Titanium rod spooled up with 8 lb. P-Line moss green mono line.


Got no action on the top and switched over to the jig for a while. Fished a 3/8 Jewel Bait Co. peanut butter and jelly with a Zoom green pumpkin twin tail grub trailer.


Well things were movin' on and I'd been at it for a while without a hookup. Had a few nibbles and swung on a few taps but missed. Finally went back to the dropshot set up on 5 lb. Maxima fluorocarbon line with a 4.5 inch Bonzai cinnamon neon core worm and connected with that set up.

Got two small ones on the Bonzai. The first one was slightly bigger than the second.




After these two guys on the Bonzai I figured I'd give the Zoom Tiny Fluke another shot. Hooked up with another little frisky devil that took a sharp dive down between two rocks and under one, came out the other side and the line was jammed in the rocks. I should have played him out to tired a little more before I brought him in.

Trying to get my line free from a whole bunch of different angles couldn't get it free and it finally broke off. Felt kind of sorry for the fish because he was still hooked up on the other end of the line that wouldn't come free from the rocks.

Here's a pic of the trapped one with my lure hanging out of his mouth.


Other fish began to come around checking out what was going on with him. I don't know if fish can send out distress signals but it seemed like they were responding to something. This is a shot where you can see the stuck fish on the left, another bass that came by to check out what was going on and also a whole bunch of baitfish in the foreground.



Was trying to figure out how to get the fish free and actually was considering wading into the lake to do it but passed on that idea because I was wearing snakeproof 10" high waterproof hunting boots.

Saw Butch Brown show up with his tricked out aluminum skiff with the camera towers on the back... Well that's a good sign I'm in the right spot to get something with the swimbaits. So I decided to go back to the Castaic Platinum swimmer for a while.


All the time I was watching this poor stuck fish in front of me and feeling sorry for it. Once while I was retrieving the swimmer back the stuck fish moved over to check it out and a light went on!!!

Hey.... why don't I try to run the swimmer back and do a loop around the line and snag it with the treble hook on the lure. Cool good idea, I decided to go for it.

Tried twice and got the line on the hook but the fish freaked out to be right next to the lure and shook it off. On the third pass I decided to pull straight up when I got the line on the hook and see if I could get the fish out of the water.

This worked and I started pulling up with steady even pressure knowing that the line on the swimbait was 14 lb. and the DS had been rigged up on 5 lb. line. I knew the DS line would give way first.

After some pulling it did. The fish popped off, the line snapped from the dropshot rig and I saw the fish swimming off to my left apparently no worse for the whole incident.

Now during this whole thing something had happened that I found to be completely unexpected and kinda weird when ya come right down to it.

To my surprise when I got my trout lure back, I got my dropshot hook from the rig back as well and the weirdest part is that the dropshot hook had stuck to the magnet under the belly of the Castaic lure which usually holds the treble hook up close under the lure while it is swimming.

Here's a pick of that weirdness....... I'll tell ya I just couldn't believe this when I saw it. Probably this is a one in a million shot. Check this out closely.... the dropshot hook stuck to the magnet dead center eyelet first.


And oh yeah.... for all you shoreliners out there, when you see baitfish in the water around the rocks like this you know you are probably in a pretty good spot to catch some bass.


I had to leave at around 11 am to take my son to football practice. I'm very proud of my son Mikie... he made the Kennedy High JV team... congratulations Mikie.

Air temp was up to 84, water was 72. Conditions had been calm all day.

Well that was it for me today.... another two bass day on the dropshots. Had six bites, landed two, farmed three and had one trapped which I released the hard way.
The other two were released also.

It was a wonderful morning at the lake. The fishing was OK
and the weather was great..... another bluebird day at Castaic. Man I love this place!!!!

Good fishing to ya, later.............. geobass

Wow, those are good looking fish

you always seem to catch something and i dont.
that bigger looking fish in the picture is MINE!!!!!

What a collection of photos... you really have an eye for taking pictures Geo. I was happy to read that you were able to get that bass freed from the rocks. That must be some strong magnet on that swimbait to hold your drop shot hook in place like that.

In looking at those photos, it got me wondering... you must have seen some huge bass swim by in your days, eh? Got any fish stories about monsters cruising by? I can only imagine the adrenalin rush you would get when a bass in the teens comes cruising by...

Great post (as always)...

Brendan

Ya those Castaic magnets are strong.

Oh I tell ya Brendan...That Lagoon has some toads in it.

I used to fish there alot when I lived in Burbank and single and used my Float Tube alot...watching a school of bass that weighed over 10lbs in a wolfpack chasing trout is something I will never forget. I have seen in it happen at the Lagoon and the Upper lake as well.

The best was sitting at the launch ramp, watching trout coming out the shoot of the stocking truck and watching largemouth and stripers sucking them up as fast as they came out.

OMG! That's insane... I'd be happy to see one over ten! I have seen 5-7 lbers engulfing trout as they were stocked on some local ponds nearby...

Good Stuff

BC

Well Brendan..... man asking if I've seen some big ones in the water at Castaic. Heck yeah I have in the past five years man, and If ya don't believe what I'm gonna tell ya now you just have to come on out to Castaic and check it out.

I first went up to Castaic because a friend of mine who was a sports writer showed me a picture of Aaron Martens with a 13 pounder he had caught on a swimbait at Castaic Lagoon. Anyway my friend was doing an interview with Martens for Western Outdoor News at the time he was fishing with Aaron and told me that it was the biggest bass he had ever seen and that if I wanted to catch trophy bass, Castaic was the place to go.

Well I started going up there just for that reason. When I first started going I wasn't doing so good. I talked to fisherman around the lake and heard some stories about big ones in the Lagoon and all....... some guys talking about fish so big they had rods pulled out of their hands, fell out of their boats, and got towed halfway across the lake fighting bass only to get broken off and have their rods busted in half fighting them and stuff like that.

Honestly I thought a lot of this was just a bunch of big talk. Not real... just seemed to be over the top if ya know what I mean.

Well as it turns out I was fishing from the shoreline one morning and I saw one in the water moving real, real slow.... just cruising by the rocks..... and I'll tell ya this was up till that point the biggest LMB I had ever seen. When I first saw it I was kind of startled... I just couldn't believe how big it was.... from what I've seen and caught myself since I'd have to give you an honest estimate that this fish was about 18 pounds. Much bigger than anything I've caught there.

Not long after that I heard that some guy had caught one over by the launch ramp, 18.3 pounds.... after what I had witnessed myself I didn't have to see the fish to believe it.

Later on that year I caught my first 10. That was on August 28 and you could just imagine how jazzed I was by my first trophy bass.

Well anyway the following year on August 28 I told my son that I just had to go back to the Lagoon to see if I could connect with another big one. He went along with me and we were fishing for a while and at around 10 AM, just about the same time I had caught my first big one the year before, my son sees something in the water off to our left pretty far away.

He says to me "Hey dad, check that out, I think thats a pretty big one coming our way. I look over where he's pointing and I can see that white silhouette of a big mama bass slowly cruising just under the surface.

I could not believe how big this fish was, it was "GIGANTIC". I had not seen before or seen since a fish as big as this one was.... but after seeing it for myself I am completely confident that it could possibly be a world record weight fish.

It was that big.

I got so excited I dropped the rod I was fishing and picked up one I had rigged up with a senko on it. I was so nervous I splashed the first cast right in front of me because I forgot to let go of the line when I cast.

I fired one out about 30 yards in front of the way the fish was swimming and tried to swim the senko right in front of it hoping for a bite. The fish just swam on by the lure without changing course at all.

I was able to fire out one more cast and just got it out in front of the fish, but again no interest from the fish... just cruising on along completely oblivious to the passing lure.

My son and I just watched the fish pretty much swim on over to the other side of the lake before we lost sight of it. I was completely amazed at what I had seen.

From the time I first saw the fish I had watched it swim for about a hundred yards before I lost sight of it under the surface... it was just incredibly big.

Later in the day when I was in a parking lot in front of a local supermarket with Mikie we were talking about how huge that fish was. I told Mikie I wanted him to give me his best shot at how big that fish was cause he had seen it too and I just wanted to check.

I left Mikie at the back of my car and went over to the other side of the row parked cars and stood at the back of one of the and put my hands out. I started asking Mikie moving my hands slowly apart.... was it like this big Mikie.... he'd say no bigger, I'd move my hands further apart. Was it like this big Mikie?, no it was bigger than that...... Like this would ya say........ "Yeah dad that's just about the size it was."

I was standing at the back of a mid sized sedan. I turned around and the distance between my hands was from the keyhole in the center of the trunk lid all the way to the side of the car!!!

I put my hands down thumb to thumbs three times..... 36" long that fish was to our best estimate. I went back across to our car and took a look at it from where he was..... yep that was pretty accurate, that's just what I saw too.

Half the width of a typical family car!!!!

Well there ya have it! My story of the biggest bass I ever saw at Castaic Lagoon. I've told this story to Butch Brown and he told me he has seen it or ones just as big as I was talking about. He also noted that that really big 19.3 he caught this year was not the biggest he's ever had on.

He said he's had a few much bigger on that have broken him off and he is also convinced that there is one and maybe more than one world record bass in Castaic Lagoon. And like me he also believes that the next world record bass will most likely be caught at Castaic.

In my opinion due primarily to the mild climate, clean water and constant trout stocking that allows them more feeding time and food when they are feeding.

Someday I hope to catch one like that..... so far the best I've been able to do was a shrimp compared to what I have seen at Castacic. Deep down I know that is part of what keeps bringing me back to that lake all the time.

And I have to say also that sometimes when I walk down along the lake shore early in the morning my heart begins to pound and I get these rushes of adrenaline with hair standing up on my arms getting ready to make a first cast into the dark waters just knowing that I may connect with one of those monsters!!!!

Man I love that feeling and I love Castaic Lagoon. If there is such a thing as a little piece of shoreline bass fishing heaven on earth.... Castaic Lagoon is it for me.

Good fishing to you guys, later............ geobass

What a great read. Thanks, I was really interested to hear some stories from you (and anyone else who has something to share). One day, I will get out west and spend some time in the company of giants... real giants... not Iaconelli giants (3 lbs) 15+ lbers. I don't think there is anything quite like that feeling you get when you approach a place where you know big fish live. There are some lakes by me that when I arrive at their shorelines, my heart starts racing and the hair on my arms stands up.

Like you said, it's that knowing that your very next cast could be that "fish of a lifetime". We are all very lucky to know this feeling. Some people do not have anything in their life that they can get that excited over. There's a lot that can be said about anticipation too... like the days leading up to a fishing trip at your favorite honey hole. The night before every trip is like Christmas eve... preparing your tackle, selecting which rigs you are going to use... the mental picturing that occurs during these moments simply enhances the moment when you arrive at the waters edge (Home)... that's what it is for me... home...

Thanks,
Brendan

nice story, i want that to happen to me

i saw a wolf pack of 5lber's lead by a 9lber one day cruising along like a bunch of bullies

Hey swimbait,

Here's one for you... There's a man made pond nearby and the water is used to cool a power plant. It's gin clear and was stocked with blue gills and bass many years ago... This place just exploded with fish from 4 lbs to 8 lbs. It is fairly deep around most of the shoreline, with the exception of a couple of areas. At the bottom of the pond, it gradually gets shallow leading into a nice flat about 40' x 40'. Every day around 11:30am during the summer, there is a school of slobs from 4 to 8 lbs that will work together to push the bluegills up into this corner flat. It is really something to watch. The smaller (4 lb bass) do most of the work. It looks like cowboys herding cattle. Once they get a large group of bluegills into that corner, the biggest bas move in from the back of the pack. I have seen some of the bigger 7-8 pounders beach themselves to get bluegill that were in 2" of water. This goes on for about 20 minutes and then the smaller bass join in and start feeding. I'm telling you it is like nothing I have ever seen at any lake before. The only thing close to this I have seen was in the movie "Big Mouth". The best part is that you can stand up on a hill and get a really good bird's eye view of the whole formation coming together... but that never last long because the desire to hook one of these slobs always gets the better of you.

Now for the tragic part of this story, about a year and half ago the power plant decided it was time to drain and dredge the pond!!! They killed almost the entire population of bass that were in there... Just when I thought I had a little piece of heaven all... it was gone in a matter of days... The good news is that there are still bass in there (and bluegill) and hopefully over time it will comeback... I heard that they were working with the DEC to try and relocate some of the bass to another pond, but I know for a fact that they were not able to get many of the trophy sized bass out of the pond and they ended up high and dry. That place was really something special and almost nobody knew what was in there...

BC

Hey Geo...

If you are throwing the Soft Castaic Platinum...make sure to haev some Mend It on hand. That glue is amazing...i repaired 3 of my plats with it...including one that all i had was the harness after the fish thrashed the bait....luck turns out..somebody must have snagged the bait onthe bottom and left it onthe ground for me to find...this was a month or so later. i slid the bait back over the harness, glued it up and its back in business...i have repaired some that ripped at the joint...they are as good as new now.