Best Fishing Spots

1. Private ranch ponds
2. Lake Hodges
3. Lake Cuyamaca
4. Lake Berryessa
5. Irvine Lake
6. Lake Perris
7. Lake Amador
8. Clear Lake
9. El Capitan Lake
10. Shasta Lake

Tackle

Use ultralight spinning rod-and-reel combinations when fishing for bluegill, sunfish, or crappie.

Rods:

Fenwick HMG: 4.5-foot UL spinning (GS46UL), 5-foot UL spinning (GS50UL); Berkley Series One: 5-foot UL spinning (SOS501UL).

Reels:

Abu Garcia Cardinal 801 (C801); Mitchell 310XGe (310XGe); Daiwa Spinmatic Z500T, Pinnacle TC2 (the world's smallest spinning reel), or the Fin-Nor MegaLite 1000.

Line:

Use 4-pound test line, though highly skilled anglers should consider 2-pound line. (Warning: You can break it with bare hands!)

Fly-fishing: Try 5-weight rods (8 or 8.5 feet long), floating line, and 9-foot leaders; if short casts are acceptable, such as at a farm pond, use a 4-weight rod.

Rigging for Bluegill, Sunfish, and Perch

There are many rigging options, of course. I prefer catch-and-release with lures and flies, while others would rather die than use anything but a worm under a bobber.

When a fly fisher finds a school of bluegill, a fish can be caught on nearly every cast by using a black or olive-green woolly worm and a strip retrieve. Small frog poppers also work.

Many small lures, such as the Rebel series of micro lures (Teeny Wee Crawfish or Froggy), Rapala floating minnow (one inch long, best in blue/silver or black/gold), and Norman Crappie Crankbait, are excellent for pan fish, especially bluegill and redear. Others love nothing more than dunking a worm under a bobber, then watching that bobber dance on the surface. To use bait, follow these directions: Tie a No. 8 or No. 10 baitholder hook on the end of your line, then clamp a single, very small split shot 18 inches above the hook for weight (at times, such as in windless conditions, no weight is necessary). Use a red worm for bait, placing it on the hook with a worm threader, then add a small bobber a few feet above that.

To take it a step further, instead of a simple bare hook, use a Colorado Spinner rigged with a No. 8 or No. 10 hook baited with a small worm. A Colorado Spinner is simply a hook with a small spinner blade on the shank. The spinner puts out a small flash to help attract fish to your bait. It flashes whenever the bobber is moved, either by a light breeze, a tug by you, or a nibbling fish.

When using a bobber, there is more excitement because you are "sight-fishing' that is, every nibble, tug, and bite on your bait is telegraphed through that little dancing bobber.

For perch, add a short piece of red yarn as a teaser at the shank of the hook before baiting it with a worm. During the best bites, you can even catch perch on nothing more than the yarn.

Rigging for Crappie

There are two species of crappie: White crappie are often abundant but small; black crappie are less common but larger. Either way, they are among the best-tasting fish available in freshwater. When you get into a school, you can catch dozens of them.

Crappie prefer eating minnows instead of worms. Therefore, use a live minnow for bait, or a jig that simulates a minnow. Rig as if for bluegill, but instead of using a worm for bait, hook a live minnow gently through the mouth. When you get a pickup, that bobber will dance just the same.

If you prefer to use lures that simulate minnows, simply tie the lure directly to your line. In this application, do not use a snap swivel. Use a crappie jig, which are best in white, yellow, yellow/red, or white/red. Other lures that work well include a Beetle Spin (a small spinner bait, best in white with red streak), EPS Grubhead, and a tiny silver Johnson's Minnow (a spoon).

If you are new to a lake or not sure where to fish, another trick is to use a crappie jig under a bobber, then drift along the shore. With the two-rod stamp available for California anglers at warm-water lakes, three people in a small boat can circle the boat with six jigs under bobbers, then let the breeze push them gently along the shore. If you get too far from shore, stop the boat and reset the drift, crappie are almost never found in open water.

Time and Place

First you must identify a pond or lake that has pan fish. Small ponds are the best for bluegill and sunfish, especially ponds with many tules along the shoreline and weed beds in shallow corners. Crappie usually require a larger water base to expand to large populations, and Sacramento and yellow perch are always abundant wherever they are introduced, such as Lake Crowley (in the eastern Sierra) and Copco Lake (near the Oregon border).

Once on the water, the best spots for bluegill, sunfish, and perch are on the edges of tule berms or weed beds, in the vicinity of submerged trees, or in shady areas during very hot weather. Crappie prefer underwater structures such as trees, old dock pilings, and submerged rock piles. If you don't start getting nibbles within 10 or 15 minutes, then it's time to move. These fish like to school up together, often in groups of 50 or more, and you should keep exploring new spots until you find them.

If you fish from a float tube, small raft, or boat, you can catch bluegill like crazy during the beginning of summer with lures, casting them right along the shoreline, tules, and trees.

The best technique for crappie in midsummer is often to fish at night, right under an intense, bright light at a dock, such as at Clear Lake. Cabela's and Bass Pro, the mail-order specialists, sell an attractor light that can be placed in the water. The light attracts gnats, which in turn attract minnows, which in turn attract crappie. When fishing at night with a bright light, you can either offer a live minnow for bait, hooking it gently through the back, or cast small white crappie jigs across the path of the light.

During the day, instead of letting the fish come to you, you have to go to the fish. They tend to roam some 15-20 feet deep, amid submerged trees with lots of branches or near areas with rock piles. The technique is very simple: Using a white or yellow crappie jig, you let it down straight below the boat, then simply pull on your line with the rod and let the jig settle again. Up and down, that's all there is to it. When you get a bite, stick to the spot, because crappie always hang out in schools, even the big ones.

Tricks

A good fish finder can really help in locating crappie. In addition, crappie are often discovered by accident while bass fishing, because a big crappie will often hit a bass lure, especially around docks and submerged trees or brush piles. I always keep a rod ready, pre-rigged with a crappie jig. Then while bass fishing, if I catch a crappie by accident, I grab my crappie rod, get right over the fish, and start jigging straight up and down.

Some people will try anything to find a school of fish. Here's the craziest technique I've ever heard: Start by blowing up a small balloon, then tying 15 feet of fishing line to a hook. After catching a bluegill or crappie, put a hook through the back of the fish and toss the fish and the balloon back into the lake. The logic is that the bluegill will swim back to the school, tugging the balloon along the surface as an indicator of where all the fish are. The theory is that if you cast to the balloon, then you are casting to the school of fish. Alas, it doesn't seem to work as well in practice as it does in theory.

Personal Note

This is one of my favorite stories.

Dad baited his hook with a worm, clipped on a little red-and-white bobber a few feet above it, and tossed it out along a patch of tules. Before long he had done so for all five of his kids "three girls and two boys" and they sat along the shore transfixed by the sight of the bobbers floating on the surface.

"Let's count to 25," said Dad.

"One, two, three, four," started Mom, leading the family chant.

Suddenly, when the family had counted to 12, one of the bobbers started popping around, dancing a bit from side to side, then was pulled under the surface a few inches. The oldest boy, Bobby, grabbed his rod, and his eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of his head.

"I've got one! I've got one!" he shouted. He tussled away with the fish, and after a few moments proudly brought a four-inch bluegill to the shore.

"It's a beauty," said Mom.

"Let's put it in a bucket," added Dad.

He dipped a big bucket in the lake, filled it with water, and the bluegill was dropped in. The two younger children, Susan and Tommy, immediately stopped fishing to watch the bluegill in the bucket. But in the next hour, Bobby caught another, Dad caught two, and Mom and the two older girls, Nancy and Janet, shared a catch.

So after an hour, there were five bluegill swimming around in the big bucket, which fascinated the kids-the little boy in particular. He picked up his rod and reeled in the line, then put his bait in the bucket, dangling it amid the fish.

"I don't know why you're fishing over in the lake, he announced. "The fish are here, right in the bucket. You can see them."

I remember the episode well because that little kid was me at age four, right about when I started to grow my beard.