Last night (4-2-05) I went up to the game refuge in los banos, fished a spot that I typically do good for cats when I'm wanting to do some lazy fishing and just relax. There's a good number of large cats and an extreme amount of carp in this pond I was fishing, a few bass and crappie here and there as well. It was very shallow, about three feet, and very muddy, dark water. Right around 8:30 pm I was fishing with whole shad, thought I hooked a carp but it ended up being a 16 pound striper!!! I couldn't believe it myself at first, so I don't blame you if you're not. But my question is this, as I always say, I really doubt I caught the biggest bass in this lake, so there's gotta be some more big ones out there. Anyone ever have any luck fishing for stripers out there? I could definitely use some help on tactics for them out there, I'll go over the conditions and if anyone has ideas, please let me know. Water is typically 3-5 feet deep through-out the whole pond, very very dark water, the bottom is that oozy smelly nasty mud, more often than not there's a bit of wind and the surface is a little choppy, however there are calm days, or parts of days, water stays fairly warm being that it's so dark and shallow, 90% of the shoreline is reeds for the first 4 feet of water. There's only a few places to get to the water, but I have a small raft and motor to get me out there. Again anything would be helpfull. Thanks
Hunter.

Here's a picture of that striper, again, 3 feet of water, in a relatively small pond. Any ideas on catching more like this? I've always gotten plenty of help from everyone on this website which has been a HUGE help to me before, don't let me down guys, I WANT MORE! =)

http://www.calfishing.com/dc/user_files/3496.jpg

Attachment #1, (.jpg file)

my suggestion:
use what worked.
I'm kinda surprised that you thought that a carp would eat a shad. I always thought that carp were preferably vegetarians.

When I lived in Los Banos,I use to fish out there alot...I never heard of a striper that size caught out there.I suspect he (she) has been out there for a long time.Those ponds are filled from weirs ,and I doubt a fish that size would have fit through them...Congrats. on the nice catch..Nathan
www.Bettencourtbaits.com

Very nice catch, congratulations!
You may have very well caught the biggest lineside for that body of water.

I'm only vaguely familiar with the area, but judging from your description of the pond & my experiences there probably isn't much of a population of stripers even near that size.

DON'T let me discourage you trying, I could be way off!

Striped Bass typically don't get very big in sm. ponds. As a kid we've stocked stripers from Pyramid Lake into several sm. ponds. Lg. fish usually died pretty quick but populations of smaller ones did well but never got over 3 or 4 lbs., displaying the lg. head & skinny body that yours seems to have developed from the photo.

I would spend some sunrises & sunsets throwing a Zara Spook to search for others. Another method to find out if there are smaller fish try flylinning some dead shad or cut bait such as anchovies, feeling for sm. strikes as the bait slowly sinks, esp. early morning or late evening as it gets dark.

I look forward to hearing about further successes.

Thanks for sharing!
Josh

Yah, I've caught plenty of carp on liver, shad, anchovie, worms, etc.. They do eat a lot of moss, but will basically eat anything that a catfish will.