9/14, UO Bassin'

Recently, due to some success using poppers, I've kind of geared my warm water fishing towards bass. Not that bluegill fishing lost its allure. I plan on focusing some trips on gillies. It's that once you've seen a bass, even a small one, blast a surface popper it's hard not to want more.

Itinerant Angler (itinerantangler.com) and California Fly Fishing have both recently had information on making poppers, both foam and cork. I'm currently working on some cork poppers. I'm also interested in tying some gurglers, Gartside Gurglers, is the correct name.

When I got a message from my fishing pal, Tom, that he'd be hitting Upper Otay both days over the weekend I thought it was about time to get my surface strike fix.

Saturdays aren't the best days for me, because I work at night, so I spent Saturday tying flies, gathering gear, and working on little cork poppers. I decided to take a bass combo only. I have a bass-specific combo I like, set up with a bass bug line, and a furled leader for tossing big, hairy, wind-resistant flies. It's 6 weight, 9 foot, fast rod. If it throws big bugs well, it throws a weighted streamer on an intermediate line a country mile.

I got to the lot at Upper Otay about a half an hour before the agreed-upon meeting time. It was a very nice morning. The sun was not yet over the foothills to the east, but the overcast sky was orange over the silhouette of the mountains. The recent humidity had broken, and it was a decidedly fall-like morning. I set about preparing tube and other gear to get on the water. Being that I have to jam my deflated tube, and tub full of waders, boot, fins etc. into my Civic, I take longer than your average truck-driving angler.

About the time I was pumping up my tube, another fly angler, named Cameron pulled up, and we chatted until I had one foot in the water. Which was about the same time Tom and Craig pulled up. I greeted them and told them I'd see them on the water.

I had a smallish, white slider tied on. A slider is like a popper tied backwards. The slider has the taper in the front, so when the line is given a pull, the slider makes a shallow dive, then returns to the surface. I like them because they still make commotion on the surface, without the loud pop, a popper sometimes makes during a back-cast. Which I can imagine scares the feces out of the fish. Bass also sometimes feed, as do trout, on insects just below, though not on the surface. At those times, a slider is a good choice. Another reason is that just seeing the fly on the surface is enough to cause interest, and a few twitches can induce a nice strike.

I started fishing the lake clockwise from the launch area, casting as close as I could to reachable structure. The idea was to hug the tulles, let the fly sit for a while, then twitch, let the ripples die, then twitch again. If something was there, and hungry, then it'd hit it. Often a small bluegill would rise to the fly, and nose it, or tug on the silicone legs, but weren't large enough to engulf it. Finally, as I was talking to Tom, while he kicked behind me, there was a splashy hit. Of course, I missed it, but it was encouraging. A few casts later, I was letting the fly sit near some tulles, and saw a nice bluegill rise to it and slurp it under, without so much as a ripple. He put up a good fight, and was pretty good sized, though not one of the green monsters Upper Otay is getting a rep for.

I worked around the lake for quite while, losing or changing flies, without much luck. I finally made it to an area a lot of the bass-gear fishermen frequent. This area is weed-choked, has a lot of stick-ups, deep, deep tulle beds, and a lot of little coves in the tulles that just holler there are fish here. On top of that there were huge schools of small shad, and little baby bass, as well as schools of baby bass up to 3 inches. Occasionally I'd kick up a debris cloud, and the shad would swarm in, eating the tiny particles of algae swirling around. This part of the lake is alive, and occasionally, frustratingly, a bass near the stick-ups would leap clear of the water to take a hovering damsel fly.

I tossed my hard-foam frog popper to the base of some tulles and let it sit while the ripples died out. This fly was kissing the tulles, as the gear fishermen had been recommending to me all summer. I gave it a twitch, without really moving it away from the cover, and let it sit again. I gave it a second twitch, lighter this time, and was a little surprised to see the water explode with a nice, though not big bass. I lifted my rod, and pulled the line tight. On my second strip, my hand slid, and I lost pressure on the fish, but he stayed on, and I recovered some line on him. This was tight, structure-heavy area, plenty of thick weeds, stick-ups and submerged structure. After a tail dance, the bass kamikazeed into some dense weeds. This often happen on this section, and I just had to kick over and reach in after him. He was a between one and a half and two pounds. He was hooked pretty deep, and after getting the popper out of his big mouth, I let him go without taking his picture.

The Charger game must have kept a lot of people at home, because for the first time since I started fishing this lake in the spring, there were only four anglers, and all four were tossing flies. There were two gear bassers, but they left pretty early.

I spent the rest of the day talking and fishing, but not catching. Tom and Craig had a little more "luck" than I, picked up a few more. We all got off the water around 1:30, and had some beers while we dismantled, and talked fishing some more. A pretty great day on the water. I got home in time to fall asleep during the second half of the Charger game, which is fine, I'm trying not to get too involved with football this season.