A gem of a lake located about 20 miles off the 101 freeway near Paso Robles.  There are lots of rocky points to target Bass and plenty of decent fishing from the shore.  The primary drawback are the sporadic and ballistic winds.  I fished from about 6am to 10am and it was mostly calm with the occasional gust out of nowhere, lasting about 2 or 3 minutes before going dead still again.

When I returned around 10:30am there was a constant, but tolerable breeze with of course those random gusts.  After lunch the breeze picked up and began to make casting a challenge, not impossible, but pretty much limited me to roll casts.  At 3:00pm the winds were completely out of hand and it stayed like that until well after dark.  I recommend using a rod with plenty of backbone to help throw the rope, especially if you plan on fishing the shore since the wind comes straight at the bank.

I began the day trying to mimic the spinning rod fishermen since they seemed to have it dialed in with crayfish imitations.  I threw my best crayfish fly for a couple of hours and got one hit that I missed.

Occasionally there were some biggies breaking the surface with enthusiasm, so I tried a hopper pattern with a San Juan dropper.  Nada.

Next I tried a variety of Wolly Buggers and got one bite that I missed.

Once it occurred to me that these Bass were males guarding their nests, I decided to tie on a saltwater Sardine pattern to see if I could get a defensive strike... that was the ticket!  Cast, let it settle to the bottom, and strip-pause strip-pause.  I hooked up 7 times in about an hour, 2 broke me off, 2 threw the hook and 3 were landed.

All of them were White Bass and a hoot to hook!  The take was fairly subtle, but the fight was amazing.  They weren't very big, but they could take line out of a reel quick.  I had a blast catching my first ever White Bass and recommend it highly to any fly-fisher looking for a game fish with muscle.