Fishing Report: San Luis Reservoir February 5, 2018

It was 10:30pm and found out I had a babysitter the next day. So a last minute fishing trip to San Luis Reservoir was in store. 

It’s been warmer than normal the past few days plus with all the reports from members on FishAholics, it looked like the striper bite was great in the shallows.  I figure I’d try shallower fishing the big lake.

I got to San Luis Reservoir a little late and the sun was already up.  I tried Lone Oak Bay right away using a planar board with the Atlas Rig tied on.  I trolled the shallows and lost interest after half an hour of no bites.  The sun was warming up quick at this point so I headed to deeper waters.

It wasn’t until I hit the 80’ depth that I hooked into fish.  It was a small one but I broke the skunk!  I kept trolling and same results.  Small fish after small fish.

  

Usually I’d get bigger striped bass in the area but it looked like they’ve all moved elsewhere.  So I went over to the Basalt side and tried my luck there.  First drop and I hookup.  Same thing.  Another small fish.

They’re biting but mostly small fish.  So I tried an area with structure, an underwater channel.  Right away it was fish on and a decent one too.  

Later that morning I moved back to Lone Oak Bay and trolled the area.  Stripers were still biting but still only dinks. 

I finally tried the 100-125’ depth and that seem to be the better depth.  I started marking schools of stripers and shad.  I found suspended arcs in 80’ of water and scattered bait balls and striper schools here and there.

  

There definitely were fish there but it was tough getting them to bite.  They liked the shad colors but I was also hooking up on the green/blue colors.  The marks that bit more often were the isolated single arcs.  Most of the schooled stripers weren’t very interested.

That afternoon was slow.  You really had to work for them.  Later in the day, I picked up Ronnie, one of the FAm.  We went back to Lone Oak Bay and caught a decent sized schoolie and that was it.  We tried all over the area and nothing.  I figure it’d be like that the rest of the day so we trolled into a new area.

    

The area we tried had changes in elevation and points which was completely different terrain from the muddy flats by Lone Oak Bay.  We trolled the area with the Atlas and still no bites.

I noticed my rod was moving differently.  Sometimes when you hook into dinks, the rod bend is so subtle you won’t even know a fish is on.  So I reeled it in and sure enough I had on a double, two dink stripers on the Atlas Rig.  We kept trolling and then I snag my rig on the bottom.  Ronnie reeled up his rig so we could get my Atals Rig out and to our surprise, he had on a double the whole time!

    

One was about 23” and the other a dink.  He must’ve hooked those when I had on mine.  Two doubles at the same time!

With those two last stripers, we left the lake before they closed the gates.  We ended the day with 13 fish to 23”.  The bite at San Luis Reservoir changes quite a bit but sometimes you have to keep switching things up like color and locations to catches these stripers.

Now you know.  Go get em!

You can find the same gear I use using the affiliate links below.

–Okuma Cold Water line counter reel 

–Daiwa Wilderness Trolling Rod 

–Scotty 1101 Downrigger

–TackleBuilders Atlas Umbrella Rig

–Humminbird Fishfinder