In the Bathtub

My good friend and sometime guide from Santa Cruz has called the San Luis Reservoir a "big bathtub." When I talk about fishing there in my kayak, he always expresses a sort of gentle pity for my attempts to find fish in that giant bathtub of mostly empty, clear cold water. And mostly he's right: I'm now averaging .5 fish per five-six hour paddle. Compared to the fecundity of the delta and the bay, the rez begins to look fairly deserted fishwise.

My experiences on San Luis last week suggest otherwise. I went out there mostly to remind myself what the boat feels like full of gear and to do some self-rescue practice in a fully loaded kayak (more general preparation for summertime Alaska adventures, stay tuned). After paddling across a large area of the lake, I spent a couple of hours drenching myself in chilly water and baking myself dry in the windless dry desert air. Energy had gone low indeed by the time I paddled troll-lessly back to the launch. Trying to catch fish was a low, low priority compared to taking a little nap somewhere.

But lo, what is that little splashing sound out there? It's not my paddles, because I have stopped to put on sunscreen. It's not wind waves, because there is no wind. It certainly isn't a frog jumping in, because I am a mile from either shore over 250 feet of bathwater. Could it be . . . fish?

I tied on a shallow-running rapala and paddled off in the general direction of the splashing sounds, completely unprepared for what I was about to witness: suddenly, the water in front of me became 'nervous' and just below the surface, dozens of largish schoolies changed direction and dashed by really fast on either side of my boat. I paddled straight into a large school of fish!

This was quite a surpise out there in the middle of the tub in 250 feet of clear cold emptiness. But as I kept circling the area, I noticed nervous water in various areas of the windless expanse. In one spot I finally got a hit, which immediately got unhooked. Fine, I mark the spot on GPS (completely lacking any kind of measurable range or reference out there) and do big figure eights. A couple of times I drive right through schools, spooking them again, and then finally a fish mercifully takes the plug hard enough to stay hooked. A respectable two or three pounder, but not fleshy enough for brochettes. So he swims back to join what must be hundreds of his buddies.

That was the only fish of the day. Yes, I tried flinging the leadcore fly setup I had on deck, but it seemed to be going under the shallow-running schools of fish. I was just too tired to switch it out for a floating line (not easy in the yak) or to strip it at the warp-speed required to keep it shallow. I ended up being so tired and hot from doing four miles of figure-eights after nine miles of open water paddling that I could hardly function back at the launch. But I was very very glad to have had that lesson in bathtub fishing. It is a real treat to be in a boat that draws 2-4 inches of water over 250 foot depths and actually hook up on a lure that runs at about 4 feet. Playing in the tub is good fun.