Outdoors : Spring-Driven Things : As Good as the Bass Fishing Has Been at Castaic Lake, the Best Lunkers Are Yet to Come

What’s this? Largemouth bass the size of small tuna attacking anything that moves at Castaic Lake? Lunkers there for the taking?

Not exactly.

True, the Los Angeles County reservoir is getting lots of attention lately, having recently produced several trophy-sized bass, among them the third-largest taken anywhere in the world--a 21.01-pounder caught by Bob Crupi of Downey.

And many locals believe that the 58-year-old all-tackle world record, a 22-pound 4-ounce bass caught in Atlanta’s Lake Montgomery, might soon be broken here.

Maybe so. There’s no question the lake has a healthy fishery. Biologists will attest to that.

Still, the bass in the lake are only beginning to awaken to the calls of spring. They remain a bit sluggish, having yet to rise from the depths to begin the springtime spawn, at which time they become downright voracious.

“They’ll eat anything they want to, even a small duck,” says Ron Glover, a professional bass fisherman who has fished the reservoir extensively since it was created in 1971. “But it’s still too early. The water is too cold.”

But what about Crupi’s fish? Or the 16-pound 12-ounce bass caught several days ago by Butch Brown of Moorpark?

There have been others, too, prompting a clerk at the local convenience store, which acts as the weighing station for Castaic fishermen, to call the month of March “one of the best ever for big fish.”

Glover says: “They’re all (live-bait) fish, and most of them were caught in deep water.”

So who cares?

The serious bass fisherman does, preferring the more sporting method of casting artificial lures--plastic worms, spinner baits and the like--to live crawfish and waterdogs sent down to the depths.

Any pro will agree with Glover, particularly during the active surface bites, which occur during the spawning months of spring and early summer.

That time, Glover says, is coming.

A guided trip with him now might provide a large bass or two, or several smaller fish. But it might also turn out something like this:

There’s a 60-m.p.h., eye-watering sprint aboard an electronically equipped, 18-foot Ranger bass boat, to a small point protruding from one of the lake’s many coves, one that has produced for Glover and his passengers in the past.

A large school of shad shows up on the meter, at about 25 feet--a likely hangout for the hungry largemouths. The weather is warm and the lake’s surface smooth, but Glover is not as optimistic as he might be this time next month.

The water temperature is a mere 53 degrees.

“About 60 degrees, or warmer,” he says, makes for ideal conditions.

But judging from results throughout the winter, he figures he can catch a few fish in the lake he has grown so familiar with.

He casts a plastic worm to within a foot of the shrub-lined shore. His customers toss theirs more cautiously--or less accurately--to points farther out.

They reel in slowly, but not slowly enough. Glover, keeping the boat in position with a foot-operated trolling motor, instructs: “You’ve got to be able to feel the bottom constantly.”

Half an hour passes and Glover has yet to find a single bass for his customers.

He decides to try a small cove down the lake’s shoreline, one he says is a summertime haven for crappie fishermen.

“One of the better crappie coves on the lake,” he says. “We get ‘em to 2 1/2 pounds.”

As for largemouths, he says: “We caught 50 or 60 here one day.”

This will not be one of those days.

Talk turns to wildlife on shore, of the deer that can be seen drinking at the water’s edge, the rattlesnakes that abound on shore in the heat of the sun.

Glover mentions the time he and his partner caught 50 catfish in an hour at this spot.

“And the smallest was four pounds,” he says, then shrugs: “But they’ve got slime. I had to take the damned boat to the car wash to get the slime off.”

He then recounts using a green spinner bait to catch a 15-pound largemouth in this spot at roughly this same time of year.

With nothing doing, time is passed gazing out over the lake’s glassy surface, at powerboats moving at great speeds in circles, at the grassy knolls and barren hillsides in the distance.

Laziness has overtaken those aboard when suddenly the restful mood is broken by the day’s only strike. It catches Glover’s passenger by surprise, and he fails to set the hook in time. The fish is lost.

Soon there is another move down a long, narrow arm that stretches half a mile or so toward the back of the lake, beneath the steep and jagged cliffs.

Other fishermen in the area have given up, choosing instead to drift and relax under the warming sun.

Glover, however, refuses to quit. Having metered another school of shad, he casts once again. The changing of colors and types of lure proves fruitless, however, and it finally becomes apparent that this is one of those days nothing works.

Asked how many times he has been skunked at this particular reservoir, Glover responds sheepishly: “Not many, but it happens.”

Castaic Lake, located about 50 miles from Los Angeles off Interstate 5, is actually two lakes: the primary reservoir, with about 29 miles of shoreline, and the smaller runoff lagoon that lies immediately below.

Last year more than a million visitors went to Castaic to Jet Ski and water ski, wind-surf and sail--and to fish.

Though powerboats are allowed only on the upper lake, both are capable of yielding big largemouth bass--as proved recently by the trophy-sized fish taken from the lower lake by Brown--and both are fished quite heavily.

The most popular is the upper, which can be downright inhospitable to the boater, with strong winds whipping up without warning.

“This lake, it’s trademark is getting windy quick,” said Pete Moore, a senior lifeguard. “The wind blows directly into the launch ramp out of the northwest and it goes right over the transom of all the boats that try to come in.”

Moore said lifeguards once recorded 70-m.p.h. winds at Castaic and that 50-m.p.h. gusts occur regularly.

“One time in 1977 we had close to 30 boats just laying in launch ramp sunk,” he said. “The wind came up real late on a Sunday when we had about 500 boats out.”

At such times, the ramp is closed to outgoing vessels. Those coming in--there are several sheltered coves and often boaters don’t know the wind has come up until they begin to cross the main channel--do the best they can, with the assistance of the lake’s many lifeguards.

But that is one of the few problems visitors may face in a trip to Castaic Lake.

As part of the State Water Project, the county-run reservoir is not experiencing water shortages associated with the prolonged drought, as most of the Southland’s reservoirs are.

Santa Barbara’s Lake Cachuma, for example, is currently 67 feet below its historical level. Habitat and spawning grounds continue to disappear and many feel it is only a matter of time before the fish population begins to suffer noticeably.

But Castaic, which has a mostly gravel bottom with some tree and rock structure, is constantly fed by the nutrient-rich water from the north, which creates a substantial algae bloom, which in turn maintains a healthy shad population.

“That’s why this lake is such a phenomenal lake,” Glover says. “The entire food chain is healthy.”

Linda Pardy, a reservoir biologist with the Dept. of Fish and Game, agrees that Castaic is one of the Southland’s healthiest largemouth fisheries, basing her claims on results of an electroshocking survey conducted last spring.

“We found bass of all sizes,” she said. “Young of the year, juveniles and adults, and they all looked healthy.”

Other fish seem to be doing well, too.

A common sight on shore is the trout fisherman, sitting leisurely in his chair, waiting for his bobber to bob and signal another bite. The DFG stocks both lakes with rainbow trout, which occasionally reach four pounds.

Stringers of bluegills and crappie are common when both fish and fishermen become active in late spring and summer months. Catfish scour the bottom and grow to impressive sizes.

But far and away the most popular is the largemouth bass. And if recent catches are any indication, this figures to be a memorable year.

Said Pardy: “The fishery at Castaic impressed me because there are quite a number of large fish. (Elsewhere) you find that a lot of the larger fish have been fished out.”