Two to hand in an hour or so aboard a leaking float tube by the dam. Water was at 51, a tad chilly but probably warmer on the other end of the lake. A front coming in means game on in 2 weeks for me.
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Winter eats heat the way darkness swallows light. The terrors of failed power and frozen stems are stymied with fire, smoke and white ash.
10lb 1 oz and a 10b spots were caught at new melones over the last couple weeks. To put in perspective, the world record spot is 10lb 4 oz. Absolutely right lightfoot, now is the time for most valley lakes if you want to get in on the agressive pre-spwawn bite in the staging water 10-20 feet deep.
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all of a man's addictions end and begin when he learns to fly fish
Lots of wind today made fishing tough. Two grabs and zipppo landed. Had my son go with me which made up for the lack of fish. Sports Chalet in Vacaville had an older Fish Cat 4 on display for cheap that I picked up for him to use. He had a good time despite the lack of fish and we'll head back up in a week or two.
The bass boats seemed to be fishing slightly deeper water, guessing 10-30', which leads me to believe that the pre-spawn is still just a tad early. Plenty of bass boats up at the lake, the parking lots were full of trucks n trailers. Lots of boats seemed to be heading up into Putah and Pope but came back out as the morning progressed.
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Winter eats heat the way darkness swallows light. The terrors of failed power and frozen stems are stymied with fire, smoke and white ash.
A friend of mine that fishes pro-bass circuits in valley lakes has been slaying them for the last week, oroville, collins, clear lake. All lakes right now are pretty consistent, guys are catching them 15-30 on drop shots, jigs, etc., and they are catching them on reaction bates, rip bates, a-rigs, spinners, etc.
With this info from a conventional prospective, I'd be throwing a sinking line with some a white clousers (trout pattern) stripping them aggressively with short pauses once it gets down in the water colum a ways. The earlier the better in terms of time of day. Think first light off of points and steep walls. Also, the big bass chase schools of fish up on the bank, so instead of fishing out in front of structure back to the midldle of the lake, try gettting close to shore off a big point and cast owards and retrieve inwards from the point. Fish are not back in the coves yet. With that said, with this weather pattern, fish will be moving shallower and off the points and back inland more and more every day.
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all of a man's addictions end and begin when he learns to fly fish
Went back up to the North side of the lake on Monday. I ended up with 25-30 grabs but just under a dozen fish to hand. Split shotting rubber worms accounted for most but I did pick up two fish on a shad type crank bait. The kicker is one of the fish on the crank bait turned out to be a king salmon? of about 22" or so. There were a lot of them jumping throughout the morning, with most of them in shallow, 10' or so of water. Most of the fish landed were smallmouth up to 3-3/12 lbs and one largemouth that was 4+. The bite was very subtle with only a few fish giving the usual tap tap.
If bass isn't your thing I don't see why a clouser minnow or other streamer pattern wouldn't pick up a king
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Winter eats heat the way darkness swallows light. The terrors of failed power and frozen stems are stymied with fire, smoke and white ash.
