Got to wall at 815. Decided to try for reds. Fished live perch on bottom by rocks. Lost one and caught one 22 inch. Left after 45 minutes. Wanted some cats. Ballons were doing pretty good with other people. Hit the dam. Liver freelined. Caught ten cats about three pounds each. One 5 pounder. Then chaos breaks out. Hooked up on all the poles with those 16 and 17 inch striper. Usually they pass through every once in a while. But for two hours it was non stop. Lots of fun. They fight awesome. Left em biting. Out of four tubs of liver. That was the best ever. Probably 25 fish. Catfish never had a chance to get bait. The striper beat em to it before it ever hit bottom. Get ya some!

Hummm....They all are just undersized it seems. They still do put up a heck of a fight.
I've caught them like that, but with the liver they seem to swallow the hook more often than not, and too deep to remove the hook without killing them, so rather than keep losing my hooks cutting them off, or risk killing the fish, I'd just move and try to find bigger fish.
Were yours deep hooked?

I did cut line on 2 or three that were deep hooked. Using cheap wire hooks. Most were good hookups. I had to leave a spot when i got into the little reds before. They were inhaling my bait. What is weird is that last year every fish was a keeper. 20 inches. Where are those at? And i did not catch any 12 inchers last year that are 17 now. Craziness. Someone said they die in the summer from the extreme heat.

I've caught them like crazy in the past and they were all about 1/4" short. Very few times where it happened that I caught some keepers, and they would be in the 4 to 5 lb. range when I did.
It's strange, and I've got my theories as always, like people keeping the undersized fish, which I've heard stories but never witnessed it personally.
As for them dying in the heat, I guess it's also a possibility, but it seems like as many years as they've been stocking the hybrids there should be a wider range of size classes, but it seems consistent over the years that you don't catch those baby hybrids and only catch a bunch of 1/4" too short fish, and very seldom catch the larger ones. And most recent years you would be lucky to catch a hybrid at all.
It makes me wonder why they even bother stocking them as this has been the case for years.
They ought to dump them into Canyon where they may do some good, but they only stock stripers in that lake and no hybrids for some reason? People will say there isn't a forage base, but if that's the case then why stock stripers as a single striper needs more forage than a single hybrid just due to the size factor.
Can't figure that one out?

Sorry for drifting off topic, but have you considered using circle hooks? They would keep from deep hooking those hybrids, but you just have to remember not to set the hook. You just let them run and start reeling.

Tried circle hooks. I instinctively set the hook. I use the ones that are bent but not all the way like a circle hook. Use those on reds when fishing tilapia. It is a mystery on striper. I remember when elroy krueger taught us how to slab big lead jigs for those huge 25 inchers and up. Have not seen that size since then. They would knock the pole out of your hand.

I remember the Elroy Krueger days! That was some big stripers back then drifting perch over the humps ! Lots of good times on Cali. back in the day. Rio

Same here Rio!

Probably got that big from eating all those crappie that used to be in the lake!

Rio, remember when we would tear em'up on tops?

Uncle C.

I went out yesterday and caught 3 reds just below 20" which was fine as I was not in the mood to clean fish. It got windy out there around 12:00 so i cut out early. I wish the day would have been a bit more productive day. I fished the wall like the rest. :-/