We Invaded Lake Amador

Who's we? Me, Yuki, and Juan from Breaking the Bank Blog. Juan and I arrived just about 9:00 and Yuki was right on our heels.

When Juan and I checked in the girl kept mentioning a 12 lb. Trout that was just caught. She mentioned it a couple times and then asked if I heard what she said. Oh yeh, I heard. See, she knows I write for the local paper and want to make sure I got that in. A little plug for the lake.

Out on the point by a very dry spillway. 

Juan on the left, Me in the middle (just happened that way because I found a spot where I could put my chair pad and plop my butt), and Yuki on the right. 

That's Juan

That's Yuki

I think I got this right, but let's see. Yuki had two rods out with crawlers. I had one with rainbow Power Bait and one with a crawler under a couple of those white floaty things. Juan had one with rainbow Power Bait and one with a crawler.

Wasn't very long before Yuki pulled in one about a pound+. Yes, I know he wasn't supposed to catch any until I left, but remember the last time we were at New Melones, he did the same thing Only this time he hadn't stopped for coffee. What's with that?

Then we waited for the  next bite. And waited, and waited, and waited.

About 11:30 (I didn't look at my watch so that's only a guess) the stock truck pulled up around the bend from where Juan was. We couldn't see it, but it's a distinctive sound.

I think Yuki has seen this phenomenon before, but it was a first for Juan. Let me explain. At Lake Amador, when they stock, I think they drug the fish. I've probably mentioned this before. When the fish are in the lake right after stocking, they swim around in circles, do a lot of surface "popping". They look like that are surface feeding en-mass, and they even swim right up to and bump the shore. AND, they won't touch anything.

So we kept ourselves amused for 45 minutes or so just watching their stupidity. It's Pretty entertaining.

Once the show stopped, I got a good hit on the Power Bait rod. Brought to a 2 lb. 12 oz. Rainbow as weighed on the Handy Dandy Berkeley Digital Scale. That's it in the picture below. 

Doesn't look all that big, huh

It was a football fish with a very beaten up tail. Most definitely a hatchery fish.Unfortunately Juan got the skunkeroo today so I gave it to him to take home. His first trip to Lake Amador. I would have rather had him catch the fish, but there will be other days.

One more trip next week to finish out the year. Think it will be at Lake Camanche North Shore.  

I've got to say that with this fish, I hit 100 trout this year which is the worst year I've had since I've been keeping track in my journal starting in 2008. ALTHOUGH, I did have a personal best of 7 lb. 10 oz. caught in this very same lake and just around the corner from where we were. I also didn't do a lot of small stream fishing which usually produces large numbers of small fish. Because of the drought I left them alone. Also the hatchery closure put a damper on stocking places like Silver Lake, Caples Lake, and Bear River Reservoir. So, a lot of mitigating factors.

So next week I'm off to Lake Camanche North Shore to finish the year. Stay tuned.