Aright, you got me to go through the old shoe boxes in the spare bedroom. I couldn't find the picture of my first swimbait fish and I'm not 100% sure that one exists. Need to check at my parents in my old "big fish" album. I did find a few polaroids from the same roll though. Which brings us back to January, 1998 at Santa Margarita lake. But before we go there...

I used to read Western Outdoor News religiously back in high school. Living in Santa Barbara I was fascinated reading about Alan Cole and others catching huge bass at Casitas on swimbaits. It made total sense to me that bass ate trout, but I was a trout/ocean fisherman at the time and had no clue at all about bass.

When Jamon and I used to fish for bass back then we only used two things. Either a 7" power worm texas rigged with no weight or a 2 and 3/4" floating Rapala in gold/black. The power worm we would deadstick on the bottom without moving it. Looking back it's amazing the bites we would get after letting that worm sit on the bottom for 3-5 minutes on a slack line. The Rapala we fished just like it said on the package. Cast out, wait for the ripples to die, then twitch it under - and repeat. We only used 6lb test with trout rods, and we caught a lot of bass. Sometimes I think I should try those techniques again.

Wound up making a few trips with Dave Jochman to Casitas in his 17' aluminum boat and somewhere in 1996 time frame I bought a 7" AC Plug. We'd tow up there in his Taurus station wagon and fish like hell for bass. Dave was from Illinois and I was just clueless. Neither of us had a good idea how to catch bass in 20 foot visibility water - which was how Casitas was fishing that year.

We went 4 or 5 times and caught one bass. A 3 pound bed fish I caught on a kalins grub. I didn't know what a bed fish was, I just knew that the stupid bass took a swipe at my lure and kept on hitting it when I cast back at it. We had almost drifted past when it finally hit. Boy I thought that bass was stupid. I don't think we ever had a follow on our AC Plugs but we sure tried.

1997 I was going to Cal Poly and decided to go to Santa Margarita lake. Didn't fish much my freshman year, don't know why. I have this recollection of catching a trout on powerbait the first day I went there, then catching a bass on a powerworm. The first reports I posted on calfishing.com were April 1999 so I don't have the report from that day. Someday I'll find my old archives of Jamon and Rob's fishing page on CD and see if I can resurrect them.

After a while I drug my Lews Float Tube up to Margarita and tried for bass. Started catching them on black/blue jigs with a single tail grub on 12lb test with a 7'10" walleye trolling rod. I remember buying that rod because I liked how the guides were small. Someone must have told me to use a long rod for flipping so I put two and two together - or so I thought. Flipping trash pockets was a good pattern back then though it was hard to pull them out of the junk.

January 1998 I got my head souped up to try my AC Plug some more (the green liar probably did it to me). I tied up my 7 inch bait on a 9'2" Sabre 190-9 glass rod with a Calcutta 400 (the no levelwind edition) with 25lb Triple Fish Camo. That 7" AC Plug felt like casting a 1/4oz speed trap on 15lb with that rod! I don't know how many trips it took (it took quite a few) but one day casting by the ramp I thought I hung a stick but it turned out to be a bass.

It's tough to lip bass with a 9' rod in a float tube but everything worked out. It was a nice fish, probably the biggest I had ever caught. I'd like to say it was a 5 pounder but didn't own a scale back then so that's between me and the Bass Gods now. I caught another one that day which I think is the fish in this photo. Just seeing the photo of those chrome hooks makes me cringe remembering all the strikes I missed with that lure (no, switching to the walleye rod didn't help my bite to land ratio - I tried).

http://www.calfishing.com/files/Images/daily_reports/1999_01_margarita.jpg

Here's a super sweet bonus photo of me fishing from shore in March that year. Hope it brings you a laugh like it does for me.

http://www.calfishing.com/files/Images/daily_reports/1999_03_margarita.jpg