Bear River Reservoir Again

I fish here a lot because it's close to home (21 miles). Tomorrow I'm meeting a couple of friends from Sacramento at Caples Lake for the 1st annual Power Bait fish off. Hopefully it will be more than an annual thing, but we have to call it something. I'm a die hard Berkley Gulp Trout Dough person. Rich's son Mark (cool name, same as mine) is a plain old run of the mill Power Bait person. Do I sound biased? Fishing for shad a couple of weeks ago, a challange was made. Plain old run of the mill power bait would out fish Gulp. We'll see. I'll let you know tomorrow what happens.

Back to Bear River. Got my usual cup of coffee at Cooks Station and hit the road. Got to the lake about 7:45 am. Parked out on the dam and set out a slip sinker rig with Orange Pulp. Put a silver Panther Martin on my other pole. 3rd cast produced a small (about 9") Rainbow. Carefully released it back into the lake. A few more casts didn't produce anything so I switched to another lure. Went through the usual spectrum until I got to a silver Kastmaster. Caught 2 on that and then nothing afterward. Noticed the fish were feeding on the surface, so I switched the slip sinker for a slip bobber rig and put Rainbow Candy on. Now this is a little tricky using floating power bait on a floating rig. Put a tiny split shot just above the hook, about 3 inches, to hold the Power Bait down. Worked. I had trout hitting the Power Bait left and right. You know how trout are. Mouth it and spit it out. Mouth it and spit it out until they break it up enough so it comes off the hook. Would never hold it long enough to set the hook. Went through 5 or 6 times of rebaiting and then they just disappeared. Were probably full. So that's the total for today. 3 caught and released. Don't know what happened to coffee vs limit. One of those days.

Did stop at the resort to find out what happened with the derby over the weekend. Even though DFG planted the lake last week, they still wouldn't allow the resort to put in any "contract" fish. Fish they buy from a supplier of sorts for the derby. Many of which are trophy size in the 5,6,7 pound range. So, the winner was a 3 1/2 pounder. $1000.00 for a 3 1/2 pound fish. Not a bad weekends work.

The other thing I wanted to touch on is fishing off the dam where you can see the fish as they follow your lure and refuse to bite. Need I say more.

Till next time, remember: "A bad day fishing is better than any day at work".

Shoreman