Almost A Bakers Dozen

The plan for this morning was to fish the spot off the dam at Caples Lake and get out of the heat. One figures that it will be cooler at 7800 feet than it will be at 3200 feet.

I pulled out of the house at 0700 and after a quick stop for coffee at Cooks Station, I was back in the truck and "put the pedal to the metal". 

I arrived at the place I wanted to fish at 0801 and at 0805 I had two rods in the water with rainbow Power Bait and Pro-Cure garlic scent. Unfortunately the wind was blowing at 15 to 20 and it was almost impossible to keep a straight line even using a 1/2 ounce sinker. 

Windy with a good surface chop

Rods almost flat

I left the bait soaking for almost an hour and then I figured it was time to move. My thought process when something like this: If the wind was blowing down from Carson Pass in my face that fast then maybe it would be blowing from behind my back if I went over to Red Lake and I'd have less trouble with the line. It's a directional thing. 

When I got out of the truck at Red Lake, there was no wind at all. The lake was glass calm. Go figure. I went to my usual spot and with one rod out with rainbow Power Bait, I put a little (3/16th oz.) silver Kastmaster on my little Okuma.

It took one cast and this small Cutthroat was to hand. With catch and release in mind, you always want your hand to be wet, but bending over every time to get your hand wet when you're perched on some pretty good sized rocks becomes problematic, so to solve this problem I got a bucket out of the truck and filled it with water. Problem solved.

Small, maybe 8 inches

Just a short interruption of this narration to show you a moon shot.

Still visible at 11:00 am

And a picture of a green, Red Lake

Red Lake?

So named because of Red Mountain.

Pretty good view of Red Mountain

OK, back to fishing. It was one of those kind of days where every cast is a bump, a fish on and lost, or a fish brought to hand. They weren't big by any means, the biggest was maybe 11 inches, but the action was constant. There was at least a half dozen SDR at my toes. One I think was a Brookie because of the shape of it's mouth. I only got a half second glance at it before it swam away.

Most of the hits on Power Bait were ones I missed. For some reason, they would hit and then were gone. I was only using a pea sized ball of PB, but I only hooked one and missed a couple dozen other hits. I must be getting slow in my old age, or the fish are getting a lot faster.   

Now, my companion while I was fishing. This little Garter Snake came slithering out of the rocks and just laid there on the rock. I was talking to it, but snakes must not have ears because it never even looked at me.

Snakey little companion

Then it turned it's head in my direction, noticed I was there, and it's left eye got as big as a nickle. I could see the look on it's face that said "Shit a human" and then it dove into the water, swam five feet and slithered back into the rocks. So much for keeping me company.

I caught and released, caught and released, and caught and released more until about Noon. I tried to stay long enough to bring that 13th fish to hand, but it was not to be. At that point I was some where between well done and burnt to a crisp (high elevation, lots of UV rays) so I packed up and headed home.  

I settled for 12 brought to hand and a whole lot missed. Oh, there were two incidents where a couple of Cutthroats swam by me just five feet off shore that were in the 18 inch or maybe bigger range, but they wouldn't touch anything I offered.

Since the weekend will be spent on the remodel project and early next week (Tuesday is now supposed to hit 108 down in the Valley) I'm spending most of the time hugging the air conditioner, I probably won't get out until the latter part, but I think I'm going to try to hit Rancho Seco Lake in the Float Tube Cumberland and see if I can rustle up some Bluegills or Crappie.

Stay tuned.

Mark