Otay AIM S.S. #2 – Prefish Day 1

My Lady and I have decided to fish the AIM Sunday series tournament (a small local San Diego tournament series). The next event will be our first, and will be her first ever event. She’s actually only fished off my boat with me once before, but it was fun, so the event, I hope, will be fun as well. The next event is at the Lower Otay Reservoir.

Last Saturday, in getting ready for the event I took my boat out to Otay to make some underwater structures on my new Humminbird 997c2 SI Combo NVB unit. The water was still cold, down to lower to mid 50’s. And the water was much higher then it was last year. Seeing how the water was 15 feet lower last year, I just went to all the stumps I remember that were only sticking out of the water a few feet, and marked those spots. Then seeing how the water used to be so clear, I remember some areas where the bottom was a sharp drop off, and marked those as well.

I’d been told that there were some rock piles in specific areas of the lake, and since it was really the first time I was purposefully marking spots on the GPS, I went hunting for them. I was surprised how easy it was to find these piles in the middle of the lake. A few “S” laps around the lake and they were marked as well.

I did get some lines wet, but since I didn’t have any needles (to purge the bloated, deep caught fish), I didn’t want to fish deep. Fishing in such cold and dirty water, and only fishing shallow, leads to a not so successful day. I did manage to get some practice time with a Carolina rigged Flappin Craw though. Most of my time was spent slow rolling crank baits past stumps, and throwing a SPRO PRO Bronzeye Frog to tulles, just in case there were some fish up already.

I ended the day with 20 marked spots and zero fish caught. I’m going to try and hit the lake again to meter two stretches of bank line that I didn’t get the chance to get last weekend. However, that all depends on the weather though. It’s supposed to rain all weekend, but the chances are only like 30%, so hopefully it will be a typical “SoCal” rain and be very light and quick. I’ll post next week if I was able to get out on the water.