A Couple Of New Places

I emailed Yuki last week that the only day I could fish this week was today. He suggested we head up Highway 4 to Kinney Reservoir on the other side of Ebbetts Pass. I'd never been any further than White Pines Lake so I said "Let's go".

I met him at the Wells Fargo Bank parking lot in San Andreas (yes, like the fault line), threw his gear in the truck and off we went. A short stop at Starbucks in Angels Camp for coffee and up the hill we went (all 63 miles).

I'm not sure what time we got to Kinney Reservoir, probably somewhere around 9:30 - 10:00. We parked at the dam and each put out one rod with Power Bait and since we could see the fish swimming in front of us, used the other rod with Kastmasters and Panther Martin's.   

Here are some photo's.

From where we parked by the dam

The gate need repair

To the left

The knob on the center left has an American Flag flying on it

The the right and part of the dam

We hung out for a couple hours, but since the fish didn't seem to want anything we offered, decided to head back down the hill to Lake Alpine. Steve, the UPS driver when I lived up in Volcano kept telling me I should go fish Lake Alpine, so we did.

We wandered around a couple of areas and finally settled in the Day Use (sound familiar) Area. Once we passed by all the people lounging at the lakes edge, we found a somewhat free of swimmers, area. Yuki put out one rod with a crawler and the other with the now infamous "brown" Power Egg.

I, on the other hand, am still in the rainbow Power Bait rut and both of my rods went out that way. Shortly after settling in, Yuki needed something from the truck so off he went and no sooner did he leave and I got the first fish of the day.  

First fish of the day

Nope, Yuki wouldn't believe me. I even showed him the picture, but he claimed it was a fish I caught last week. Nothing I could do to convince him, so I had to catch another, which I did shortly thereafter. This one we put on the stringer since Yuki's freezer was getting a bit "fish" bare.

The third and final fish of the day came within the next half hour or so. Once again the Yuki Hex took hold.  

In between fish, I took some shots of Lake Alpine to share with you since none of us has been there before.

Across the lake

I used that log to tie the stringer to, after I pulled it ashore. 

Across to the left

Down where all the swimmers were

Some more of the lake

About then, the clouds started rolling in. We were expecting thunder storms this afternoon, remnants of the hurricane that is causing so much havoc in Southern California.

It begins

While Yuki was munching a sandwich, this little food thief showed up and of course, Yuki being the soft touch he is, started feeding the little beggar.

A rear end shot

OK, munch away

Then some more clouds started moving in and we decided that we wanted to try our luck on the North Fork of the Stanislaus River which was on the way back, anyway. Nice little creek. Would be a good fly fishing spot, but Yuki saw a guy fishing there with Salmon Eggs and pulled a couple fair sized ones out. So we tried Salmon Eggs and Meal Worms, but could only rustle up those little bitty bait stealers.

More clouds

While we were working the creek, the dark clouds came and so did the thunder. Time to pack it up and call it a day.

We'll do this one again, another day.