I'm Disgusted

My feelings are hurt. Nobody said anything about the new Northern California Trout logo. Designed and crafted by Joel DeJong over at Another Year On The Fly. Might be T-shirts or ball caps in the future, but I'm not giving you guys any.......Just kidding.  

Before I get into the title of this post, I want to double check the guys already signed up for the drawing and make sure everyone is in. I know that Blake, Lambton, and Brad from Fish Tales are good, but I want to double check with Alan and Bill. Let me know if you guys are in.  

Since I'm trying to be good to my Editor at the paper, I planned to fish either Lake Amador or Lake Camanche. Plan A was to check out Amador first because it closest and see how the water level was.

It wasn't quite where I wanted it to be, but decided it was up far enough to give it a try. You'll remember that the last time I was at Amador the water level was about 20 lower than this morning. You can see that it's close to the buoys, but I would have liked it to be past the buoys and up to the overflow. Guess you can't have everything.  

Higher, but not quite high enough

I set up one rig with rainbow Power Bait and my little Okuma with a variety of Kastmasters. I fished six colors and never got so much as a bump. I fished them on the top and let them sink to the bottom. I even fished both the Power Bait and the Kastmasters where the guy going by in the boat said that all the fish were holding on the bottom in 16 feet of water.

After an hour of casting I switched to two rods with Power Bait, one with sweet corn scent and the other with garlic. Still nothing. Then I switched one to Anise scent and I had two taps on the line and thinking back they were probably fish swimming by and hitting the line. It was that kind of tap.

After a couple of hours and some surface feeding (the fish), I packed up and went back to the truck, put on my hip waders, and headed down with the fly rod. I figured I couldn't do any worse.

I walked and fished all the way across the spillway, along the far point, around the back side and down to another cove. A splash here and there, but nothing interested in what I presented.

The far point

Now I know you guys are going to use the phrase "That's why they call it fishing and not catching" on me, but this is a lake that should produce something on Power Bait, Kastmasters, or flies, but this is now the lake that hasn't produced anything except one in December. Go back to January and February 2011 and every day was 3 or more fish and some of them were 3, 4, 5, and even bigger.

Add the lack of fish and the price increase at both Amador (close to $20) and Camanche ($12.50) this year and I think I'm going fish some other lakes, even if they are out of the county.

OK, promised I'd give you a report on the hip waders. Got them from Cabela's. They are the (Hold on a second I'm getting the Cabela's Fly Fishing catalogue that is nailed to the end table that is beside my chair) Three-Forks 420-Denier Featherweights in Stockingfoot ($54.99). I already have boots so that was the only ones that made sense. I find two things that are a hinderance, but not enough to not use them. First, they seem to be rubber lined and makes it hard to slide your leg into them. Second, the ankle area is kind of tight and makes it hard to get your foot into the bootie part. Those two things aside, they are awesome. I fished them twice in the American and today at Amador and it's much easier than chest waders, but keep in mind that I normally don't go any deeper than about knee deep. Not very steady in the river even with a wading staff and don't need to go any deeper in the lake.

So that's it for Monday. Maybe later in the week I'll got up to the "secret" lake that everybody knows about.

Mark