Been a while since I've fished. Used to do a lot of fishing in Kauai for tucanare (peacock bass), and largemouth. Would go smallmouth fishing now and then, but to get to the river with smallmouth you'd have to jump off a huge waterfall (same one they show in the NAVY commercial where the backpack gets sucked over the waterfall). Yup, thats the smallmouth river. Fun fishing, there's wild hogs on the banks. You basically hop from lava rock to lava rock and find pools to cast into. Used a 5' rod with an old shimano and 4 lb test. Small jigs and sluggos worked the best. Chart. spinnerbaits were nice too.

Anyways, I'll stop rambling. I moved here to San Luis Obispo to go to school at Cal Poly last fall. Been missing fishing a lot. The other day my friend told me about a pond on campus here. So once I learned there was a pond within bike riding distance I had to get a pole. I went to Copelands and bought a 5'6 Ugly Stik Light action for 4-8lb test and a Shimano Symetre. Spooled up with some 8lb Stren. Bought a Hula popper, a small one bladed spinner bait, some worm hooks, bullet sinkers and some small worms. Not sure what type they are, I threw the package away.

I rode up there, hopped the fence into the cow pasture and found my way to the pond. Nice little pond, not very big, can cast right about to the middle of it. Reeds on one side and a small patch on the other. My friend told me he had fished the small section of reeds the other day with crawlers, hooked a largemouth, catfish and some kind of bluegill thing. He didnt know what it was.

Tried my hula popper first, worked the reed sections and randomly casted around the middle of the pond. nothing, saw some bait fish jumping.

Then I switched to some 4.5" Staril Tail Roboworms. Texas rigged with 1/8 bullet weights. Worked the edge of the reeds for a while. Then casted for about 10 minutes into the middle of the pond. I felt a nibble, nibble. And I yanked, and set my hook.

The fish stripped my line for about 5 seconds then did a nice big jump and headshake. It was a great sight. After that the fight was pretty much over, a couple small runs. but came in easy on its side.

The fish weighed about 2 pounds. Was just fun catching a bass for the first time in about a year.

Just thought I'd share the story with you.


What have people been having luck with around here in SLO? What do the bass eat? Im only used to fishing for HAwaii bass. What color lures work best in the spring time? Is there a website with information on California Bass fishing?

Evan

Welcome to Cali!!

Actually there is more then one pond in that area. I live just south of ya in Santa Maria. I was turned on to those ponds from a friend (aka Joel "Boatless4now") that lives in SLO. We had good sucess using pig n jigs, spinnerbaits and Senko's flipped into the tules. The pond that you are talking about also holds Crappie. As far as what the bass eat in those ponds, I would say crawdads, minnows and bluegills.

Hope to see ya out there.

Rudy.

Hey Evan,
I live up in north county and work here in SLO....If you wanted some good info on fishing this area (Lakes,ocean) I would go to a cool store in A.G. called Wilderness Outfitters (also called TackleWarehouse.com) They are great on info for the lakes around here. They also carry just about anything you could want for tackle. I do alot of bass fishing on Margarita, Lopez, Naci lakes....

Have fun!
Bryan

Welcome to the site :)

If you want a good view of the various ponds, head up to the top floor of the library and have a look around. There's 5 or 6 of them out there in the Ag part of the school.

Now you gotta head over to Margarita or Lopez and throw some baits around. Now is a great time to go fishin.

Welcome to SLO.

I live in Morro bay and fish Lopez and Santa Margarita often. I've never fished any ponds around here, but my guess would be to use small finesse baits. 1/4oz spinnerbaits in white or white/chartreuse. Senkos are good in several different colors. I've done best with watermelon red/grn flake, motor oil and any other color similar to those. Robo worms are very popular around here as well. The most common way to fish that type of worm is gonna be drop-shotting or slit-shotting. I would definitely try split-shotting those worm you got. Good colors for me have been Aarons magic, blue crawler and oxblood variations. Hope this helps.

Wow, I never knew there was that many ponds up there. I was thinking about heading up there tommorow and testing my luck. Maybe I'll stop by the library first and check out the possibilities. I havent fished Margarita or Lopez mainly because I'm boatless and floatless. Can you rent canoes or anything up there? I'd love to rent a canoe for a half day or something and paddle around. I was down in Santa Barbara this weekend and was staying right by Cumacha Lake or whatever its called on the 154. I wanted to go fishing sooo bad. Its funny, I've rekindled my fishing desire.

Evan