The Los Angeles Park Lake Campaign

by

Dennis Leeflang

The single closest park lake to my house is a sizable 27 acre body of water. As it offers all the conveniences of a city park (easy parking, easy to navigate, bathrooms), it’s my go-to water for a quick and/or easy session. Friends who have lived and fished in this area longer than I have insist that multiple 30lb+ fish were caught here. I started to fish this lake seriously in 2021. There are definitely carp here, but I have never seen any carp show. No jumps, no splashes. This likely has something to do with the pedal boats on the lake during the warmer months.

The carp generally stay deep. The only times I have observed carp on the surface is in one particular corner of the lake where people feed ducks all day long. I could see the carp mouths gulping right between the ducks on a few hot summer days.

But as luck would have it, fishing is not allowed from the pavement, and this duck feeding corner is a paved pathway. I did fish as close as I could get to this duck feeding area a few times, dropping a spinner rig with a white pop-up (hopefully resembling bread that had tumbled down) right between the ducks. I got several bites but each time the carp immediately ran into a pipe under the bank, instantly cutting my line well above my snag leader. There was simply no way of preventing this because of the angle I was fishing from. Frustrating!

I’m estimating that last year I did about 25 sessions at this lake, totaling close to 200 hours. This includes one serious pre-baiting campaign. Now, time spent on the bank is never time wasted, and most of these sessions were with the mindset of some quiet time on the bank, reading a book, watching the birds, relaxing. Catching a fish would just be a bonus. My grand total at this lake for 2021…. A single 14lb carp that I finally managed to hook in the duck feeding corner.

It’s a puzzle I grew determined to solve. It’s anyone’s guess whether the lake still holds carp over 30lb, but I was definitely convinced that there is still a good number of carp present that are worth fishing for.

So for 2022, my initial goal for this lake was to figure out how to catch carp here, what I had possibly been doing wrong and, if I did manage to unlock the mystery at least partly and started catching fish, how big of a carp I would be able to catch.

The first thing I wanted to do is to fish all around the lake. Every corner, every distance, every depth. The latter quickly became moot. I never had the possibility of checking out the lake with a sonar, but I did randomly strike up a conversation with an elderly gentleman very early in the year, who happened to be part of the construction crew that dug this lake in the 1960’s. He confirmed that it’s a sand pit with an even 10ft depth all over. As I worked my way around the lake, I blanked everywhere.

There’s a small cove with a waterfall and often bass anglers shoulder to shoulder all around the cove, but that area proved to contain so many snags (presumably shopping carts, bicycles, who knows?) that I lost a rig every other cast. This would normally pique my interest as a possible favorite place for carp to hide out, if it weren’t for the fact that any fish in the cove would be bombarded with lures all day long. It made sense to write off that cove, at least for now.

So now that I felt like the chosen swim isn’t much of a factor, I settled on a comfortable swim, just far enough from the playground and most of the bass anglers, from where I could experiment further.

The next thing to try was distance. Throughout 2021 I had been using 10ft and 12ft 3lb rods (you can take the angler out of Europe, but you can’t take Europe out of the angler?). With these rods, a 6-8oz ball of packbait won’t easily go past 60 yards. I purchased some new 12ft 3.5lb rods. Not just stiffer, but also a few steps up in quality.

Keeping my packbait ball closer to 5-6oz, I was now able to get to 80 yards comfortably. I decided to fish one rod at 80 yards (20 wraps) and the other at 64 yards (16 wraps). As always, I fished accurately. Distance sticks, marker elastic, rigs on the exact same spots every time. Recast every 30 to 45 minutes, to account for the nuisance fish decimating the packbait. My logic here was that the carp might feel the safest and least suspicious in the center of the lake, because of the many bass and catfish anglers casting up to roughly 30 yards all around the lake.

Of course this is far from a scientific experiment. Pure luck or seasonal behavior of the carp can play a huge role. But the first time fishing at distance, I was surprised by a run within about two hours. A beautiful 11lb common graced my net and boosted my confidence. Could distance be the key? Despite this being a small fish, I was as happy with this fish, at this lake, as I would be with a 30lb fish anywhere else. It was a huge achievement for me after all these hours. This particular day, my session was going to be about 3.5 hours, before heading to an afternoon rehearsal. I released the fish and, with the idea of catching a second fish being completely unreal, I chucked my rig in the general direction and distance, without complete accuracy. No packbait, just two pieces of fake maize on my trusty German rig.

With only another hour to go, I had started packing up and just as I sat down for a minute to review the pictures of my fish, the same rod rattled off again. What on earth!? This time a torpedo of a 16lb common. Amazing!

Careful conclusion of this session was that distance was key, complete accuracy may not be but still won’t hurt. From here on, I was planning to keep fishing the same distance to confirm my distance theory. At this point I also carefully added the target of catching a carp over 20lb at the lake.

The next session was an afternoon session of roughly five hours, right up to park closing time. I had taken the opportunity to test out some new line and rigs, as I was heading to Arizona for four days of Buffalo fishing a few days later. Four hours of just a few typical nuisance fish, but then just as I had started to pack up, my far rod burst into a single-tone run. I instantly knew this fish was bigger. No fast head shakes, slower movement and just keeping low and far without budging.

It ended up taking me close to 30 minutes to get this fish in, which is pretty insane for a carp of any size. Every time I finally got him in somewhat close and I kneeled down to get ready to net the fish, he was off again, taking 20, 30 yards of line. He must have done this 10 times. Wouldn’t give up! When I finally managed to get the fish into my net, my arm was numb, my back was hurting and a crowd of people had gathered behind me. None of them had actually seen the fish yet. Lots of gasps when I transferred the fish onto the mat. 20lb 2oz. By no means a massive fish or anywhere near a PB, but for this lake… Absolutely amazing.

Again, it’s too soon to draw any real conclusions, but as I was trying out new rigs this day, the idea that the rig could possibly play a part in tricking a larger fish was in my head. I had been using my trusty German rig previously. Coated braid, size 6 curve shank, two pieces of slow-sinking fake maize. Today I was using that same rig on one rod, but a fluorocarbon version of the same rig on the other. On that rig I also went with a 15mm white vanilla wafter as a hookbait. The 20lb-er fell to the fluoro rig and wafter.

Could it be that the larger carp here can actually spot a coated braid rig and steer clear? Fluoro, being invisible underwater, might be the key. Or was it the wafter replacing the fake maize?

Two weeks later I came back. This time with a friend. I decided to fish at 80 yards with both rods this time. My friend brought 10ft 3lb rods so he was fishing much closer in. Of course I want nothing more than for my friend to catch a beautiful fish. But if I would catch and he did not, it would further confirm at least my distance theory. I also decided to use a fluoro rig on each rod. One being a trusty German rig with fake maize, the other being a fluoro D rig with a white wafter.

We got there at 12. Park closed at 5. Several nuisance fish, but no carp. At 4:30pm, we had started packing up. I always leave the rods until the very last moment. As I was about to pick up my right-hand rod, it beeped once and the bobbin came up about an inch. I decided to reel in the left-hand rod first instead. When I was halfway reeling in my left-hand rod, the right-hand rod took off.

No nuisance fish, that was clear. 10 minutes later, a gorgeous 19lb common on my mat. This one took the D rig.

Careful conclusion… In addition to distance, Fluorocarbon rigs and/or 15mm white wafters are probably the key to the larger fish here, though it doesn’t seem to matter what type of rig as long as it’s tied with fluorocarbon. I’ve been back a few times since but with no luck.

Temperatures have dropped dramatically so that could very well play a role in the fish having slowed down. Those last few times were all afternoon sessions, however. I’ll soon have to try a morning. I certainly had a great time experimenting and trying to unlock this lake. Was it all just luck this year? Am I on to something? I will keep fishing through winter, at least once every few weeks, to collect as much data as I can. Determined to find fish over 20lb in this lake in 2023!

Keep your fingers crossed for me; I’ll report back via another blog or two letting you know how next year fares…

Dennis Leeflang

Instagram: @socalpubchucker