For several years, my cousin tried to get me to go bass fishing with him. Being and avid fly fisher and trout man, I always declined.
Finally, in mid-August 2009, I decided to give it a try.
I met at Randy's house at 4 am, hooked up the trainler, made sure the lights on the trailer worked properly and then headed to Lake Hodges in Escondido. Lake Hodges almost seems like another country; it sure doesn't seem like Escondido that we just drove through.
I had no idea what was doing. I was using a 10-20# Shakespeare Ugly Stick with an Abu Garcia Ambassadeur 6500C3 reel (the pike setup I used in Canada).
We started with poppers - kind of the dry fly of bass fishing. What a kick! Seeing a bass come up and attack the poppers was a blast. We switched to crank baits and got more hits.
Randy is an excellent teacher.
He taught me the Palomar knot (several times) and explained how the lures work (several times), spent time un-tangling my bird's nests and re-assuring me that I was doing fine.
The day turned out with Randy catching 1 small bass, but we had lots of hits (and misses), had lots of fun, but best of all - I got to spend a day with Randy and do some fishing.
It doesn't get much better. I was hooked!
Things really changed on our 3rd trip - we went to El Capitan Reservoir. This is more of what I expected - we got off the freeway and drove another 20-25 minutes into the hills to
get to the lake.
Lots of hits and misses later, we'd both caught and landed 3 nice bass and had a blast. If there was any doubt about whether I liked bass fishing, it was gone now.
Since then, we bounce mostly between Lake Hodges (our favorite) and El Capitan, but we've hit Lake Jennings and Lower Otay. Susan has come with us a few times and goes with us a couple of times a year.
Most of the pics aren't named and are from all our trips over the years. BTW - the bad boy in this picture is a 7.25 pound largemouth landed by Randy.
We've experienced all sorts of weather from quite chilly to very hot, to windy, misty and a very fun, extremely foggy morning on Hodges. ENJOY THE PICS!