Camped at Cachuma with Brian and Zack on Sunday. We had some problems with getting a vehicle to launch the boat on Monday morning (and no slips on Sun. night) so come Monday morning we drove over to redrock. Hiked back into redrock and threw poppers, along with worms. Poppers seemed to be the ticket and we nailed the smallies for quite a while. Brian #2 actually stuck a couple nice fish, about 2lbs. Pretty surprising for redrock, as they're mostly the little 8"ers. We also saw a couple bigger smallies cruising and I had one literally jump 2 feet out of the water when attacking my popper. Not after I hooked it, mind you, but on the strike it just jumped way out of the water. It was really cool. I ended up farming it, but it was a nicer fish. The redear were in the mix, especially toward the end of the day. Brian slayed and probably had around 13 fish or so. Zack and I both had about 5 or 6 fish. All fish released, and if somebody wants to go back there, PLEASE release your fish. It's a really small area and can be dessimated very quickly. We saw one guy with what looked like a couple short smallies on a stringer amongst a bunch of bluegill, so we informed the ranger on the way out.

Monday night I had to go home to attend the Sanctuary Advisory Council meeting on Tuesday, but Brian and Zack fished. Zack caught his personal best fish at 4lbs. along with another 2lber I believe, while Kettler caught a bunch of little smallies and some keepers. He said every 15 yards of shoreline he'd catch a fish, so I guess it was pretty good...

Came back to the campsite on Tuesday night and was up on Wednesday morning at 5:45. We fished a bunch of different areas and it was pretty slow. Brian picked up a couple fish on topwater in the morning, but the topwater bite never really turned on. We heard of a crankbait bite so we went crankin for a little bit. We weren't getting bit too much, so as I was blankly staring at my tackle box I realized how much baby bass are in the water and that I have a 1/4 oz. baby bass rat-L-trap that I never use. So, I tied it on and proceeded to nail fish. Kettler soon tied on his only baby bass colored crankbait and we caught a few fish. I ended the day with 3 keepers and 3 shorts. All smallies, biggest only about 1 3/4lbs. for a grand total of 3.75lbs. for my 3 fish. Brian had 2 keepers I believe, one "rarjmow" and one "smarmow" both of the 1lb. variety. Zack probably had a legal fish, but I don't remember. We all caught quite a few little smallies mixed in with the keepers.

Wednesday night Zack had to leave and David came up this morning. We threw Rat-L-Traps all day long and caught a few fish, but it wasn't as good as yesterday. I had two legals, one barely 12 and one 13 inches. Kettler had 3 (I think, maybe 2... I'm tired), with one nice one a little over 2lbs. David got a legal and dominated the baby bass. I had 5 fish, counting shorts, David had 6 and Kettler had 7. So, pretty good fishin. Definite crankbait bite, and on the traps no less. We tried the crawdad colors a little bit cause that's what the fish were supposed to be eating, but they just chewed those baby bass colors. Wish I had more of em... Never thought I'd see a baby bass Rat-L-Trap bite at Cachuma, but it happened... Fish seemed to be on rocky shorelines, but we caught fish in the weeds too. Ten Pound Point and the surrounding area produced for us, as well as similar areas.
-Brian