Hi I have a question, the other day I went night fishing at Coyote Reservoir in Gilroy, CA. Although it was against the rules, since there were three of us we felt it was safe to get on our boat and troll down the reservoir in search for bass or trout. Since we didn't have much luck from the dock (b/c of really high weeds and constant snagging) we decided that our flashlight was good enough of a guide for us to find somewhere decent to fish. I had a 1/4 ounce silver kastmaster that i was tossing in the water and my friend had a texas rigged worm. Often we'd shine our flashlight at the land to see how far we were from shore and we'd see a bunch of large fish just jumping to the surface. This got us excited and we tossed our lines where we saw the jumps and kept real quiet, but as far as bites were concerned we got close to nothin if we didn't keep getting in weed country. What kind of fish were these that jump when you shine light on the water, my guess is trout but as weedy as it was I wouldnt' be suprised if they were bass. Water depth was about 10ft - 15ft and you can see tall weeds when u shine your flashlight into the water. Is there something we were doing wrong that we didn't catch these monstrous fish that kept jumping just feet from us or what? Please help me on this one cause it was like 4 am when we were out there and I usually have good luck at other lakes at night just not this reservoir.

Please keep in mind that this is a public forum. Posting illegal activity here is a very bad idea. Authorities can and do monitor websites such as this one, and it also doesn't do much for your reputation if you know what I mean. With that said, the fish you saw were carp.
-Brian

lol, perhaps i put it wrong, it was not illegal to fish there at nite, its one of the decent places that nite fishing is acutally allowed in the bay area, it was just not very smart to boat there at nite since it is a large reservoir so by illegal i didn't mean lawfully but more of a risky type of thing to do, by the way if the carp are hitting top water like that would floating corn do the trick because I was at almaden lake the night before i went to coyote reservoir and i used a silver kastmaster by the shallow area about 2 ft deep with rocks and i pulled in a 6# carp off a kastmaster and i had a few bites from lmb but nothin major since the lmb there are usually the size of your hand anyways :/ but i have heard there are 10# + lmb i guess i just dont know where to look...lol

That is pretty trippy to catch carp on a kastmaster. I know what you were going through because I've caught many carp on kastmasters, too.
It is very rare that carp hit lures from what I hear. Yes, I've seen many carp fishermen use bobbers to catch them from the surface. If they were bass I would use a zara-spook or buzz-bait. If those don't work then I would use big suspending baits or big plastics on light weight.

777

Fishing at night at Coyote is legal from shore. It is not legal from boat or float tube etc. It sounds like you know that already though. Like Brian said, the fish you saw were carp. There's tons of them in Coyote.

try to catch has many carp as possible any way possible and KILL THEM

i must agree
carp root around the bottom, mucking up the water and killing other fish's eggs. they may not taste good but you might be able to deep fry them with cajun sauces...in china it was okay good

I've heard this sentiment about Carp a lot but I've also read somewhere that by killing a bunch of carp you just stimulate a more productive Spawn and that the population does not decrease at all. Anybody else know about this?

RF

it might mean that the remaining carp have more drive to reproduce but if you get all of them it dosent matter...although i doubt you can get them all....yet if you deplete the numbers enough the other fish may kill off the remainder