Los Banos, CA (September 25, 2025) — San Luis Reservoir striper fishing has slowed down the past week for trollers and boat anglers working the shoreline with topwater or ripbaits. The bite may have slowed due to the heavier water input raising the lake nearly a foot a day for the last 2 weeks to the current 1,070,000-acre foot level (51%) . The rising lake is covering new structure and the fish are moving a lot now searching for the baitballs – that are also repositioning. Water temps are in the 72-76 degrees- and the algae remains heavy with low visibility.
We are seeing a lot of suspended inactive stripers that are spread across the water column instead of seeing schools of fish that are feeding and schooled up right now. The best bet seems to be to keep moving till you find the active fish- and not staying on fish that aren’t reacting.
The main lake seems to be the best place to work since the fish are staying closer to the deeper water drops. We are trolling Lucky Crafts at the 50-70’ depth range with a 120’ setback off the Downrigger balls at 2 mph for our fish.
Finding the fish is the key issue, but once you do ,most standard Shad colored lures will work on the troll.
The catch numbers have been lower than usual with most anglers getting 1-2 fish for the day, but some bigger fish are showing up. I guided a guest last week in a slow bite -but he caught and released a new PB , 38”, 23.1 lb fish .
I rate the bite at a 3 star out of 10 right now. The cooling weather and less wind should help things improve soon.
Checkout my weekly San Luis Reservoir striper videos on the new YouTube fishing channel “Catch America” . The channel features most of the top trout, king salmon and striper guides in California and has already reached 160k this year .
