Digital Camera

Fairmount Park, in Riverside, California, is one of the largest urban parks in the Inland Empire region. It has a rather interesting history, as it was originally dedicated in 1898 as a park. In 1911, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr, famous for his design of Central Park in New York, created the plans for the layout of Fairmount Park’s landscaping.  There's also an odd military tank , on a pedestal, at the west side of the park. Apparently, such tanks were built in the Riverside region for use in WWII (over 500). There’s an excellent writeup about the complete history behind Fairmount Park at the Riverside Parks website, (PDF format).  I have been fishing Fairmount on and off over the last month. Unlike visits during other times of the year, these recent trips have produced fish consistently. Granted, they have all been fairly small. However, it’s always fun to land something at Fairmount, given my history of getting skunked at this park. I have been catching largemouth bass, gre...

After watching the buzz over the umbrella rig for largemouth, called the Alabama Rig, Swarming Hornet, Power Tackle, Bait Ball and more , I decided to make my own. Inspired by some fantastic creations at Tackle Underground and other custom fishing lure websites, I visited Lowe's and cranked out a few custom, Alabama-rig style lures. These are pretty lightweight and certainly wouldn't handle a huge fish very well. However, they swim great in the water with flukes on and are pretty easy to cast. They do have a tendency to snag on the bottom, as any massive rig of umbrella lures would certainly be at risk for. A faster retrieve in shallow water helps avoid this. Furthermore, in some states (California, etc), angler's cannot use more than 3 hooks on a line. Thus, on my four-wire DIY umbrella rig, the 4th one has no hook, only a soft plastic teaser. I put together a little video showing off how I made this homemade version of the Alabama rig. Enjoy!

I hit Lake Perris for some late October bass fishing on the 23rd. Hadn't been back to this SoCal bass gem for a couple of months, was really eager to get in on some bass action. The local fishing forum was buzzing with quality reports on sunfish and bass, wetting my appetite. I started out around 8:30am at the public launch ramp cove. Fished it hard from the east side, while watching the day's boat traffic prepare for launch. I threw jerkbaits , dropshot plastics, and micro crank for nothing. This was not the way I had envisioned my trip going. Only had one decent bass follow the jerkbait back, but he wouldn't commit ( c'mon !). Spoke with a guy on a sweet red/black bass boat who cruised by. He said he usually fished Castaic and this was his first time to Perris . After growing tired of my shore spot, I hit up the area around the launch ramps, careful to avoid active launchers. First cast, on the BPS XPS jerkbait, BAM, fish on. Just a 1lber, but he had some fight...