Ok, I’ve been chasing them for around 6 months since park rangers say it’s the only fish in descent quantities in the lake I fish every Sunday morning. I’ve caught them in a couple of fishing trips but the rest is just attempts.
Does anybody have any experience catching these fish? The two times I was successful with them I could see them so it was just matter of trowing the fly right in front of them.
It’s a bit cold now so I guess that’s why they are not active but I want to know if anybody can share any info on those. The lake also holds carp but I haven’t seen one since it got colder.
I should mention that I haven’t been able to hit them even with an ultra light spinning setup I use when I take my daughter fishing with me.
Thanks in advance.
Martin…your not fishing the Salton Sea are you:rolleyes::rolleyes:
Seriously my CA fishing books are in Palm Desert but I’m pretty sure in one of them that discussed fishing the Salton Sea there was a discussion of fishing for them.
If you don’t get any info…just bump this thread up in about 10 days …and it will come up on my computer. I’ll be in PD then and that will remind me and I can look it up.
If I remember correctly they said they tend to keg up and sight fishing was the best.
Wow, Salton Sea is near Riverside which is a bit too far for me. The only waters I have near are Santa Monica, Malibu, Hollywood beach and Castaic lake but by near I mean at least 30 min drive so that means sacrificing fishing time that I don’t have plenty of.
Long story…
So all I have for a while is Lake Balboa, it only takes me around 10 min.
Three suggestions. A small green worm using a San Juan Worm pattern. A BS Fly, it tied with a peacock estaz body on a size 6 hook, dark olive wing and tail made from maribou and an orange maribou throat. Tie it with a large copper beadhead fished under an indicator, same for the worm above. Lastly, when spawning, a smallish Muddler. Not sure if they are hitting this out of frustration or thinking its one of their young. All three fished very slow.
Thanks Chuck, would you mind sharing some pix of those flies? I know how to tie the Muddler but it would be a great help if I saw the other you’re suggesting.
Most people in Hawaii use bread or earth worms. I take my grand daughter to the canals where the people “feed the fish” and use a fly that lookl like a small piece of bread. Kind of like the “flesh flys” used in Alaska. LOL
Last year fishing for Mexico bass in Lake Baccarac… we ran accross a strain of tilapia that would hit anything from a popping bug to a streamer fly. Weighed from 2 to 3 pounds and put up a great fight. Good fun.
When active tilapias are very aggressive, but they just stopped hitting my flies. When trying my sinking tip fly line (8wt) I caught small tilapias with a shrimp like fly but with that size of set up I didn’t even feel the hit so I was thiniking that maybe a sinking tip 5wt would be a good idea.
Bread fly…hmmmm, that sounds like a good option. I’m going to tie some right now. Thanks a lot!
I use a #8 spider.
Martin,
The one environmental condition that has the biggest effect on our ‘catching’ of fish is the water temperature.
Tilapia react to cooler temps, perhaps more than native fish do. As the water cools, they become less agressive, but they will still feed.
In my experience, when it gets into the fall, Tilapia will strike very gently…often hard to tell they took the fly before they have spit it out again. They want a very slow, if not motionless presentation ,and they won’t be as likely to ‘chase’ a fly. Depth control is critical.
Best way to combat all that is with a strike indicator. Light tippet with smaller flies, fished under an indicator, will let you ‘see’ subtle strikes, as well as give you absolute control over your depth and presentation speed.
Which flies you use is less critical, but somehthing like a small scud or anelid will work…so should a GRHE or Prince…or any generic small nymph pattern. They don’t seem to be all that fly picky.
Good Luck!
Buddy
Well, I hit the usual lake today in the morning and caught one tilapia on the corn fly. I pretty much threw it and did nothing for a few secs, it was an agressive hit considering how cold it was.
I saw some folks on the other side of the lake catching them probably with mealworms or bread. Maybe next weekend I’ll try there.
I have had good luck with a small yellow clouser…I have had the best luck dapping them instead of traditional retrival…I have caught 3 species of talapia doing this but they are a tough sell for sure
Oh, my!! Not to derail this thread … just an observation.
You’re talking the Ala Wai canal? I went to high school right at the side of the Ala Wai, and never even looked in it! I was really NOT into fishing back then!!
Betty
The Ala Wai Canal (right in Waikiki) is loaded with tilapia…
but we go there for the Barricuda and GT.
(the reason the fishing in there is so good is because the
Ala Wai is poluted that even the locals won’t eat the fish)
[i]Tilapia serve as a natural, biological control for most aquatic plant problems. Tilapia consume floating aquatic plants, such as duckweed watermeal (Lemna sp.), most “undesirable” submerged plants and most forms of algae.[14] In the United States and countries such as Thailand, Tilapia are becoming the plant control method of choice, reducing/eliminating the use of toxic chemicals and heavy metal-based algaecides.
Tilapia rarely compete with other “pond” fish for food. Instead, because tilapia consume plants and nutrients unused by other fish species and substantially reduce oxygen depleting detritus, adding tilapia often increases the population, size and health of other fish.
Arizona stocks tilapia in the canals that serve as the drinking water sources for the cities of Phoenix, Mesa and others. The fish help purify the water by consuming vegetation and detritus, greatly reducing purification costs.
Arkansas stocks many public ponds and lakes to help with vegetation control, as a robust forage species and for anglers.[/i] I found this here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilapia Maybe the secret to catch them is to use something entierly different like some aquatic plant immitation? I cannot test this here because the water temperature is to low for them to survive.
Well, the problem comes when they eat all the plants, I’m not sure if that’s the reason why either, I’m just thinking outloud here but this pond where I fish on Sunday morning don’t seem to have a lot of vegetation wich affects fishing a lot since the other fishies don’t have a place to hide or ambush pray. I guess they all go to the deepest part of the pond (?). Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to catch much. That’s what happened to my favorite pond in AZ except they threw grass carp in there.
Small yellow Clouser eh, what size Bonefishwhisperer? The only one I caught last Sunday was on a corn fly.
Martin, you are correct…though it is worse than that…the vegetation provides for the whole food chain…so no food for the other fish and they don’t thrive…read that as die:(.
It happened to a lake on our Oregon coast when they put in too many grass crap…the lake go eaten bare…when they realized what had happened they killed off the grass carp.
Grass carp are sterile so at least they can’t multiple and make things worse. I guess it’s possible to strike just the correct number of grass eaters …don’t know about tilapia…
Hmmmm corn fly works, yellow clouser works… slower presentation… Try an unweighted boa yarn leech in yellow.
I take by “small” you guys mean like size 12 or 10, right? I gotta tie me some boa leeches.
Sounds like the Tilapia like the color yellow!
Sister Carol’s Grass Carp Fly uses a greenish/goldish/brownish mottled boa yarn. Bernat makes that yarn, and calls the color “Mallard”. If you can find that material, you might try that color (especially the predominantly green parts), tied in the boa yarn leech style. I tied one on a 8 hook, but you could tie it on a #10 with no problem.
Here’s how the fly looks “wet”:
thats why they have stocked peacock bass in Miami…talapia completely took over…now it is the main food source for growing population of peacocks from Ft Lauderdale thru Homestead…I even have pic of FishnDave scoring a spotted talapia
