Yesterday morning I texted Yuki giving him an update on whether I'd be able to fish Camanche North Shore. Passed on to him that my stability (mentioned in the last post) wasn't as good as I'd like it to be to fish the rocks.
He suggested Middle Bar Bridge. I said that the last few times I'd been across the Highway 49 Bridge (just upstream from Middle Bar) that there wasn't much water in the river.
The Mokelumne River is fed by the Electra Power House further upstream from the 49 bridge. This is the same area as the Electra Fire last July although the area around the power house is basically bare of any burnable material and it survived.
We met at La Casa Kautz at 11:00 and he dragged me kicking and screaming out of the house (just kidding) and got his gear and part of my gear (he moves a lot faster than I) into my truck and off we went.
The nice thing about MBB is that you can drive right to where you want to fish and unload. Then a short drive to the end of the bridge where you can park.
You can see in the picture below where my truck is parked.
There wasn't as much water in the river as I would have liked because the power plant is running at a minimum. Maybe another couple feet in depth would have been nice. It's Winter and electricity usage isn't nearly what it is in the Summer thus less water coming down the river.
But since we were there and had made the 3 mile drive at less that 5 mph (rough road) I shortened my leaders and put out two lines with brand new Rainbow Power Bait. Everything I had before was old and hard.
We spent maybe a couple hours and did a lot of catching up since we hadn't seen each other in many moons.
Finally threw in the towel around 1:00 and voila, no bait on the end of both my lines. Did I have a couple bites? Won't ever know although both rods bounced a couple times but I couldn't tell if it was something other than the blustery winds blowing right down the canyon into our faces.
Nothing caught, no bites (maybe), but caught up on our lives.
North Shore Camanche is waiting.
Stay tuned.
Mark
ReplyDeleteThe center-piece of this trip was you make it out and was fishing with your fishing buddy.
Glad to know that Alex and his family are safe, hopefully the war will end soon--hope you guys have a great Christmas!!
Ok. That's it. I am going to make a trip out there next spring. So, stay inside this winter and stay healthy. My legs and lower back will hopefully be back to normal by then. We need to finally meet and catch a fish together...Have a nice holiday season.
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