Hunting at Fairmount Park

Night fishing has proven to be a tricky beast for me to tackle. I only have the confidence to fish a select few lures, mostly topwaters. I desperately need to branch out and try some other approaches, but the excitement of late night surface explosions keeps bringing me back. It's hard to beat the rush from a massive strike when it's pitch black outside.

(More after the jump)

Green Sunfish + Urban Creek

Caught these green sunfish in an urban creek in California. Green sunfish seem to be found wherever there is water-city park ponds, major reservoirs, even dinky storm drain creeks (as was the case for these). You can tell Green Sunfish from Pumpkinseed Sunfish based on their relative mouth sizes-the Greenies have larger mouths, almost like juvenile largemouth bass.
I would rather catch bass, but hey, it's better than a skunk, right?

Lake Perris

I fished Lake Perris for bass and sunfish a couple of weeks back. This report is super old, but better late than never, right?

Tried exploring the shoreline of Lake Perris for a few hours, hoping to find some hidden spots. It's really overgrown, but at least they don't fence it off, like at other lakes. Spotted two deer, couldn't get very close.

Somebody is missing their floatie.

The bite was slow, to say the least. The boat traffic was insane, loads of people jet skiing, and racing around on the water. Really choppy, and much more algae than I have encountered before. The topwater action at dusk was awful, nothing like spring or early summer. Only managed this dinky dink largemouth bass.

I stopped by Fairmount on the way home, hoping to score with some night bass. No dice, but I did run into this hoodlum. Raccoons and people compete for the trashbin leftovers at night here, fun to watch.

Fairmount Park in Riverside Largemouth Bass

Fairmount Park in Riverside offers loads of water, lots of cover and absurdly well-educated largemouth bass. They'll just laugh at your pathetic attempts to catch them, no matter how realistic your lure is. Such was the case for me at this city park in California. My first trip to Fairmount landed me one largemouth (last year), but I haven't been able to catch one since, until tonight.

Oh, I do love a good topwater explosion. Best part of bass fishing, IMHO.

Thanks, Fairmount.

California Bass Lures

Remember that 7lber I caught a few weeks back? I lost the lure I was using and thought I would stock up on a few more. eBay came through for me and I scored on the above lures for about $1 each. They are cheap and ugly, but they'll work. Hooray for Chinese knock-off lures!

Inland Empire Bassin'

Got these nice largemouths in California at the same place where I got the 7lber (last post). Really nice fish, the top two were my biggest, at 15'' and 14'' each. My Canon digital camera ran out of battery for the 15'', had to resort to ghetto cell phone pic. Lots of thick algae and muck in the water, the summer algae bloom is really showing its colors. Everything was caught on 4'' Yum Dingers, shad two-tone color. This pond needs more water, soon and very soon.

Monster Bass

New personal best for me. Great way to start time fishing in SoCal. Caught a load of dinks earlier in the day, than, last cast of the day, nailed this 22 inch beast. Throw in girth measurements and it was around 7.5lbs.
Secret spot, Inland Empire. 6lb test mono. 8:00 pm. Hardbody swimbait.
I'm getting waaay behind schedule with some of theses posts, caught this guy almost two weeks ago, but life has been very busy! More pics of the fish, plus more detailed report over at FishingNetwork forum.