Lunker Largemouth : Former Beach Boy Scotton Knows Where They Are Hiding in Rejuvenated Lake Casitas

Bass fishing. Conjures up certain images, doesn’t it? Perhaps a couple of guys from Alabama, each with several first names, grimly whipping lures into a shrub in some swamp?

So what in the name of a chartreuse crankbait is a perpetually grinning, half-Filipino, former surfer kid from Hermosa Beach with a diamond in his left ear doing hauling monstrous bass out of Ventura County’s Lake Casitas nearly every day of the week in his work as a professional fishing guide?

Jerry Scotton left the waves and the traffic in 1969, seeking a better place to raise his family. He settled in the community of Oak View, five miles from Ojai. And today, although only a few thousand people live in Oak View, Scotton is delighted to report that thousands of Florida natives are just down the street.

Florida largemouth bass. Big, strong and aggressive, the transplanted bass now call Casitas home. And Scotton, who grew up fishing the surf and later from boats from San Pedro to Oxnard, found a new love. He still fishes the ocean on occasion--he recently was spotted in his bass boat more than a mile off the coast of Ventura hauling a king salmon aboard among a fleet of giant commercial sportfishing boats--and even ventures to Lake Pyramid in the winter to battle jumbo striped bass.

But in the last 20 years, most of his fishing time has been spent on Casitas, where he seemingly has learned the precise location of every underwater hump, ridge or rockpile and the favored location of many of the lake’s largemouth bass. On a lake where the first-time visitor is hard-pressed to catch even small bass, Scotton regularly puts his clients onto giants. He has boated several 16-pounders, dozens of 14- and 15-pounders, and he considers catching seven- to 10-pound bass routine.

Not long ago, however, Scotton and other veteran Casitas anglers were worried. As another winter came and went with only a few light rain showers, the once-magnificent lake diminished in size dramatically. Trees that were once submerged and provided bass with shelter were high and dry, some standing starkly more than 100 feet above the new shoreline. Huge coves and inlets that once supported thriving bass populations could be crossed on foot without getting your socks wet.

The drought was slowly killing off one of the state’s great bass fisheries.

But then came March, and the rolling hills of Ventura County were pelted with rain. Day after day. More than 15 inches fell in many areas. Much of it swelled the streams and creeks that feed Casitas. Quickly, the lake began to fill. Dry trees again were covered. Water swept into the dry coves and inlets.

Now, the lake is at more than 60% of capacity. The high-water lines created during normal years still ring the beautiful lake several feet above the current shoreline. But for those who feared the lake was headed for destruction, who felt when the lake dropped to 45% of its capacity early this year that another season of drought would make it suitable not for boats but for goats , it has been a remarkable transformation.

After the rising water level slowed, bass that had been forced into deep water in search of food began to move back into favorite haunts. By April 1, Scotton again was finding giant fish in old, familiar places.

A few days ago, more good news arrived for Scotton and other bass anglers: The shad had returned.

The silver-sided baitfish that drive bass bonkers also retreated into deep and inaccessible waters as the water level plummeted over the past four years. But now they were back. And Scotton was excited.

“Can’t miss with shad,” he said last week as he prepared to gather some in predawn darkness. “Nothing gets to big bass like shad.”

With a bait tank soon filled with shad, Scotton turned his 20-foot bass boat away from the marina and soon was hurtling across the lake at 30 m.p.h. In a few minutes the boat glided to a stop more than a hundred yards from shore.

“Guys fish the spawning beds along the shore all day long,” Scotton said. “They might get a big bass if they’re lucky. But in three feet of water, bass are spooky. The big ones, the really big ones, don’t spend much time tucked up against the bank. The big ones are out here.”

Under the boat, the water was more than 100 feet deep. But ahead, at a spot Scotton can locate even in the dark, a hump rose, a jagged rock formation that until recently nearly scratched the surface, but whose tip now stopped 15 feet below. And around that rock outcropping, many bass live.

“They use the wall as an ambush spot,” Scotton said. “They’ll lie up against it and wait for a school of fish to swim by. And then they pounce on them.”

Often, according to Scotton and others who fish the lake regularly, the fish that stumble into this bass ambush are not shad but fat, healthy rainbow trout.

“The really big bass will move up along the rock ledges and just wait for that school of trout to pass,” Scotton said. “And then they attack them. I caught a 16-pounder on an eight-inch rainbow plug.”

Randy King, manager of the lake’s boat rental service, has seen even more remarkable shows of bass aggression.

“We’ve had guys with a stringer of trout dangling over the side of a boat, and the trout got attacked by a huge bass,” King said. “They came right up after the trout. I saw another stringer of trout that had huge chunks of flesh stripped off them by the bass.”

For the anglers in those boats, such an attack can bring a rush of adrenaline.

“The last time it happened, the guys in the boat were pretty excited when they came in,” a smiling King said.

Using trout as bait is illegal in California. Shad and crayfish--the three- and four-inch crustaceans that also thrive in the lake--are also prime baits, along with artificials. On a recent morning, however, Scotton knew that shad would be the key.

As his boat eased up on the submerged rock wall, he instructed his companion where to toss the lightly hooked shad.

“Yesterday, there was a 12- or 13-pounder on that spot,” Scotton said. “I saw him.”

The shad hit the spot Scotton had pointed to, and within seconds the line snapped tight and the rod nearly joined the bass in the lake. The angler set the hook, but it was too late. The bass had gotten a snack.

“That was him,” Scotton said calmly. “That was the big guy.”

There would be others during the day, fierce five- and six- and seven-pounders, but nothing like the one that got away.

At another rock ledge, a strike brought an instant response from Scotton, and he battled a bass for nearly 10 minutes before bringing it to the boat. As the exhausted fish lay on its side, the thread-like four-pound test line having done its job, Scotton reached down and grabbed the fish by the lower lip and swung him into the boat. The fish weighed nearly eight pounds, its huge, gaping mouth easily capable of engulfing a man’s fist.

Fortunately, because its water is the drinking water for much of Ventura, there is no swimming allowed at Lake Casitas. A bass the size of the lake-record bass--a 21-pound 3-ounce monster that was boated by Ray Easley of Fullerton in 1980--just might (OK, fishermen still lie a bit) attack a small child.

And that would surely bring every Billy Bob that side of the Mississippi running to Scotton’s little town.