I also fished Putah today, its the first time ive fished it in about 4 months. I struggled, 4 small fish to hand. Not very crowded which was nice this must be due to the poor fishing. When I fished 4 months ago I told myself I am done fishing putah but once again it sucked me back in. Im just very frustrated with how its fishing. Ive been fishing it for about 7 years now and usually do well with numbers and size. Today I covered tons of water and had to go to a spot where I know there are little ones just so I didnt get skunked. Can someone give me some insight on what is going on with the fishing? My theory is this Lots of the bigger fish that I used to catch were hold over planters that had survived in the creek long enough that they began to take on native characterestics, they fought and even looked more like native trout, I even think that lots of these hatchery trout ended up in lake salono got fat on all the bugs and nutrients in the lake and ended spawning in Putah. This gave the impression that Putah had a lot of Natives that were spawning!!! When in fact they were holdovers. One possible flaw to my theory would be if the fish that are planted are sterile? Any fish bioligists on the board? Even if they were sterile they would still try and spawn correct? i.e all the reds that we see in the winter! Any comments would be helpful, if this is how Putah is going to be I hope they start planting again, catching 8 inch native dinks is fun but I enjoyed Putah much more before.
Nah, most of the bigger fish caught in the past would be native in my opinion. Sure there may be some holdover planters that start to look wild and get some nice size but I think for the most part a large percentage of the planters are caught and kept.
