I recently read an article about pre-spawn fishing and that it is good to start looking for pre spawners in the "North end" of a lake, because that is where it will start warming first, so the article said. I am curious, in most cases the north end of a lake is where you have the most water coming in...flowing North to south. But on a lake like Santa Margarita it is flowing South to North. So in a lake like Margarita, would you still look for the warmer water in the south end or the north end? No this isn't a riddle.... :-)

Bryan

To fish is to live!

The north end is warmer most of the time in the northern hemisphere because of sun exposure. The sun is over the equator, so therefor it is to our south. Therefore any banks or slopes that face the south will get more direct sunlight then those banks facing the north. the banks on the north end of the lake, face south, and therefor warm up better. Im not sure if water flowing in has much to do with it.

Next time your at santa margarita, look at the hills around there. You will find that the vegitation on the south facing slopes is completely different than those slopes facing north. The north facing slopes will appear slightly more lush than the dry sunbeat south facing sides. This is becase of the same phenomina called "aspect" in ecological terms.

Hope that helped

Ryan Thoni


If people concentrated on the important things in life there would be a shortage of fishing poles.
~Doug Larson

Thanks Ryan,

Makes sense....

To fish is to live!

I'd use a more scientific approach to determine the best pre-spawn areas. Margarita is such a small lake, it won't take long to fish the entire lake during the prespawn time of year. Once you identify the best pre-spawn areas, you can pattern them around the lake and of course fish them year after year.

Fishing north facing banks in prespawn is something that has probably been printed in every Bassmaster magazine since the first one came out. It's in Roland Martin's book and people repeat it over and over in articles. Maybe it's true, but if you base your fishing on truisms like that one, you're going to miss out on a lot of stuff. On big lakes, do you really think the fish all swim to the north end to spawn? Righty-O!

Back when I fished that lake a lot my best prespawn areas were on the east and west facing coves, not in any relation to north/south, sunlight, or lack thereof. I could say the same thing about many other lakes. Just think about the likely spawning banks that are protected from main lake wind and then work your way out a little ways. You'll catch plenty of fish.