At many lakes in SD and some in So-Cal you can basically rent the lake or rent the off limits areas. The typical deal is that it has to be for a press event so that the lake will get some good publicity out of it.

I think about stuff like that and there's two sides to it. On the one hand you get to go jack a bunch of fish which is totally fun. On the other hand, you typically have to do something in the press to promote the lake as a result... which inevitably means that more people will go to the lake and pound it, especially if you fished anything that wasn't off limits and people can get a read on where you were fishing. If you're taking photos, it's easy to hide your area, if you're taking video ... that's a bit harder.

I think in the long run, I'd rather not show off at the lakes I fish regularly by catching fish behind the bouy lines or otherwise and showing it around. I just like fishing the lakes when they're not packed with boats I guess and I've already been down that road when I used to show all my pics and post all my reports. If someone offered me San Pablo before the opener and said go for it, or Chabot at night from a boat or whatever, I would sure consider it, but in the end I'd probably turn it down.

But at the same time, you can easily see how a touring pro like Ike or Byron, they don't care about going to Casitas and showing it on video because they won't be back any time soon so it's no biggie. The attitude down there may also be that Casitas is just pounded anyway, so what's another 20 boats on the weekend, but that's just speculation on my part.

Anyway, I hijacked that thread pretty bad, so my apologies. As far as the original question of where to fish at Casitas, I couldn't tell you but I do know that the lake is loaded with big bass, so you are probably going to be putting your bait in front of some even if you don't know the lake that well. The key to catching them, like anywhere, is to stick with it all day, check all the depths from the 50-60 foot range on up and just adapt and learn as much as you can as you go.

-Rob