A Hot-Spot Review and a New Website Feature

Contributed by: Murf

The Hot-Spot Review - Coyote Percs
Since I’ve had some success over the years on these ponds, including a great recent outing with two other SJBers, and since there seems to be a growing interest among SJBers about this place, I decided to do a review and pass on what I’ve learned about these ponds - and ask that you all contribute any additional wisdom you may have - in hopes of encouraging more folks to check this place out and hopefully hook some decent fish while they’re at it.

We’ve seen these water bodies referred to by at least three different names on SJB over the past month or so; I and others have referred to them as the “Morgan Hill Percs,” and we’ve all read posts and reports from other SJB members who call them the “101 ponds” (due to their visibility from Hwy 101) or the “RC ponds” (due to their proximity to the RC airfield.) This series of percolation ponds is located just east of Monterey Road between Live Oak and Palm Avenues in Santa Clara County’s Coyote Creek Park Greenway. If we really wanted to be accurate in our reference to these ponds, we would call them the Coyote Percs, because they are part of the Coyote Creek groundwater recharge system and because they are located neither in Morgan Hill nor in San Jose, but in the small county area of Coyote… a town of sorts, although it’s not incorporated. So, from here forth I shall refer to these ponds as the Coyote Percs.

Tunis provided a description of the origin and purpose of this series of man-made ponds in a recent thread.

If you haven’t yet dropped a line here, you should add it to your list of places to fish this summer. It is best fished by tube or pontoon, but fishable water can be accessed from the shoreline if you’re willing to hike a bit between casts.

There’s probably no chance of hooking a world-record largemouth in these impoundments, but 4 to 5 pound fish are common if you know how to target them.

Conditions - I’ve found that larger fish in these ponds tend to relate to current, cover, and wind more than they do to water temperature or depth, especially during mid-daylight hours. These ponds will stratify (have distinct temperature layers) during the summer, but the dissolved oxygen content of the water is probably more dependent on current and wind than it is on temperature, so you can find active bass in warmer waters than you normally would in larger impoundments. Large bass here are by far more reactive under windy conditions, along the wind-blown banks (the banks receiving wind and wave ripples,) for probably two reasons. First off, because the wave action provides for a higher oxygen content in the water. Secondly, because the surface ripples create a visual boundary between the fish and the angler… if the fish can’t see you, she is less likely to turn a cold shoulder to your offering. Surface ripples also diminish the surface disruption your bait makes when it lands on the water, providing for a softer entry that is less likely to spook a big bass.

Approaches and Baits - The majority of fish caught in these ponds come on weightless Senkos flipped to the tule edges around the islands. Concentrate on sparse outcroppings that offer big bass the opportunity to back in and surround themselves with cover while facing open water.

Another good approach, and one that is likely to produce a bigger bite, is to pitch a bulkier bait such as a Jig or a Texas-rigged craw or lizard to the tree lines along the main banks. Most of your bites on these types of offerings will come on the fall, just as they do on Senkos. Go light with your sinker or jig head to produce a slow fall. Zipper worms, with their exaggerated surface area, will produce a slow fall if you need to increase weight size to overcome windy conditions.

If you’re fishing from the bank, try a lipless sinking crankbait near moving water. Remove the front treble hook so the bait won’t pick up the multitude of weeds that line the bottom of these ponds. Cast out at a 45 degree angle, let the lure sink to the bottom, and retrieve on tight line at a speed just slow enough to keep the nose of the lure in contact with the bottom. This mimics a sculpin or craw bouncing off the cobble bottom, and will entice bass from a larger area than the precision pitched plastic baits. I’ve also witnessed a guy hook and land a 12lb channel cat fishing this method, so make sure your hat’s on snugly.

Larger fish in these waters feast on the abundant bluegill, so chartreuse spinnerbaits and chatterbaits with gold blades also work well. Cast and retrieve parallel to the bank to lure active fish out of the cover. This method can be employed from the bank or from a personal craft.

Under windless conditions, if you’ve got a cool hand and a quiet pitch, as well as polarized sunglasses, you can get good numbers of bass by sight fishing. Under glassy conditions, I’ve had very little luck noisily chuckin’ and pluggin’ here, so I’ll usually try quietly walking (or kicking) around the ponds, keeping a low profile while looking for sunning bass. If you can spot them and gently put a weightless offering on their nose, they’ll take it about half the time.

Access - Travelling north on Monterey Road, turn right onto Barnhart Ave. If you arrive before 8:00am or plan on staying till after sunset, park outside of the gate at location 1 (Click on Aerial Photo to enlarge.)

If you go during the day and have a vehicle that can handle light to moderate off-road conditions, you can drive down to a convenient launching site at location 2. If you’d like to access the northern-most ponds only, turn right onto Ogier Ave off on Monterey and park at location 3.

There are four main ponds at this site. Pond A is the one used primarily by the RC club and in my experience is not worth fishing anyways. Pond B is the easiest to access and in my opinion produces the most fish. Pond C will produce bigger fish, by consensus of most anglers that I’ve talked to and in my own experience as well. I’ve only fished in Pond D once, and I had to access it by launching in Pond C and taking a tube ride through the swift chute of river that connects these two ponds. I’m not sure if Pond D can be accessed by foot.

Now, back to the first paragraph, where I told you I’d be looking for your input as well… While I do claim to know something about the Coyote Percs, and I hope that this advice will be helpful for those members who are not familiar with this hot-spot, I certainly do not know everything, and would appreciate it if other members could add to what I’ve suggested here - or tell me (and everyone else) if you disagree with something I’ve said. After talking with Marce about this idea, a new website feature was born for SJB:

The New Website Feature - Comments Section

Marce has already begun implementing a comments section as an appendix to the front-page, entitled “Front Page Articles” to give you all a forum for adding to or providing your opinions on what is published on the SJB front page. The comments section will be particularly useful to SJB members when a front page article’s subject is a product review, or a review of a specific fishery, such as this installment. We will provide a link at the end of each article to the comments thread created for the article. You can also access this section directly from the Forums page.

To comment on this article or the new website feature, click here.