Last night (4-2-05) I went up to the game refuge in los banos, fished a spot that I typically do good for cats when I'm wanting to do some lazy fishing and just relax. There's a good number of large cats and an extreme amount of carp in this pond I was fishing, a few bass and crappie here and there as well. It was very shallow, about three feet, and very muddy, dark water. Right around 8:30 pm I was fishing with whole shad, thought I hooked a carp but it ended up being a 16 pound striper!!! I couldn't believe it myself at first, so I don't blame you if you're not. But my question is this, as I always say, I really doubt I caught the biggest bass in this lake, so there's gotta be some more big ones out there. Anyone ever have any luck fishing for stripers out there? I could definitely use some help on tactics for them out there, I'll go over the conditions and if anyone has ideas, please let me know. Water is typically 3-5 feet deep through-out the whole pond, very very dark water, the bottom is that oozy smelly nasty mud, more often than not there's a bit of wind and the surface is a little choppy, however there are calm days, or parts of days, water stays fairly warm being that it's so dark and shallow, 90% of the shoreline is reeds for the first 4 feet of water. There's only a few places to get to the water, but I have a small raft and motor to get me out there. Again anything would be helpfull. Thanks
Hunter.