Yet another day at Santa Margarita. I don't usually fish on weekends but since school is back in for the kiddies I headed up there around 1pm. There were quite a few serious looking bass fisherman out today. Didn't see any of them catching anything but I was suprized by the number of 200 horse mercs out on the water. So to the fishing... Well for most of the day it was lousy! I fished the marina cove for nothing, then down towards white oak for one dink on a speed trap and one dink on a pins minnow. Then over to jackass canyon for a 13"'er on a duh! spinnerbait. Then all the way back to the walls in the narrows for nothing unitl I came around the corner where it opens back up. By this time I was tired of running and gunning down the bank so I put on a 5" green sardine fish trap on a 1.5oz head. Heavier than I usually fish but I wanted to be dragging it through the sticks in the 12 foot deep water. I worked this one small area pretty thouroughly but didn't have any bites till I saw a boil way out in the middle of the channel. Ahh the beauty of a heavy leadhead, I fired out a 200 foot cast and took about 10 cranks and stuck a nice pale colored 3 pounder. This was all the love I could find up there though and I headed back down the lake, stopping on some specific spots but not finding much. FINALLY, at around 7:20pm I pulled up on a small point where I've taken some nice fish lately and proceed to farm 4 bites in about 5 casts. They were doing the tap tap and nothing routine. At least they were biting, so I come around to another small point and the line slacks up on the retrieve so I smacked this one and boated a nice 3lb-7oz'er. From there it got pretty good for the next 20 minutes and I boated three more fish all over 2lb with the biggest around 3lb. After working at it all day, it was nice to get some easy fish. <BR>One thing that I'm finding to be true about fishing these swimbaits for freshwater bass is that the little ones will come up and you'll feel a sharp tap tap. What I'm learing to do on these bites is just keep reeling and wait for them to eat it. Sometimes they don't come back but there's no point in swinging on these sharp bites. The better fish will either just annihilate it in which case you aren't going to miss them, or more likely you'll feel your line get kinda slack or wobbly. How to describe this? It feels like someone pusing on the tip of the rod, just kinda squirrely. These bites you want to slam 'em hard because they'll cough it back out. I saw this happen to my buddy Dave last week. He was bit but didn't realize it because they boat was moving towards the fish and by the time he realized what happened the fish had coughed it back out. I know exactly what these fish are doing because I've seen them do it to the AC minnow in the spring. The small fish will run up and hit it and swim away quick. The big fish will swim right next to it and then eat it and swim off to the side. All you feel is the line getting a little slack and wobbly. <BR>