Natural Lefty
07-10-2009, 01:28 PM
Greetings! My report is even more belated than that of Teejay, but I finally got around to getting posting privileges here. I have been visiting this site for years, but I am primarily a blogger with my own sites. I usually go fishing about once per week, though, or on vacations, mostly low-budget, shore fishing for panfish or wild trout, and usually with my wife Eunice, or shall I say, "Redear Yumfish." Most of the fish we catch are rather small, although Eunice caught a Redear Sunfish that weighed about 1 1/2 pounds at Aha Quin on the Colorado River in April.:Smile:
Anyway, here is the brief version of the story of how I caught my personal best trout on June 20. My wife and I went to stay at my brother's house for a week in June. Fortunately for us, he lives at South Lake Tahoe. On Thursday, June 18, I found a spot on an inlet stream to Silver Lake, the reservoir near Tahoe, not the one in the June Lake Loop, where I lost 3 consecutive large Brook Trout, I would say in the 13-14 inch range. Frustrated, I went back to the car to tell Eunice about it. I thought she might have better luck there, so I went to get her pole from the car. When I opened the trunk, however, the key broke off in the trunk, and I was left standing there with only the nub of the key in my hand, no spare key, and no was to drive back to Tahoe.
Eventually, we managed to call my brother, Bruce, and he came to pick us up. By the time he got there, it was 9 p.m. We went back to Tahoe, and found a locksmith the next day, who agreed to go to Silver Lake and make new keys, for $200. While we were there, I showed the creek to my brother, who works fas a scientist for the California State Water Quallity Control Board. He determined that this creek was excellent trout habitat. My brother is involved in the project to restore Paiute Cutthroat Trout to their native habitat in the Silver King Creek drainage, so he has become something of an expert on trout habitat. We saw 3 large Brook Trout while we were looking at the creek, probably the same 3 I had lost the day before, but we had no fishing equipment this time.
I was determined to catch one of those large fish, so back we went the next day. It turned out that the Brook Trout no longer wanted to bite. I think I had inadvertantly given them "smart lessons." I went down the creek trying to find some willing fish, with no bites. I wasn't messing around; I was using a split shot, small worm hook, and garden worms, which seemed to be working the best. Finally, my first cast at a new pool, I had an immediate bite. I knew it was a big fish, especially when it swam straight at me and wallowed for several seconds by the shore in front of me. I could also see that it was a Rainbow. After that, it took off and went on various drag-screaming runs for several minutes. Finally, I had it tired out, put my net into the water, and the fish swam straight into it.
The fish was 20 1/2 inches long when I measured it, easily my largest trout of any species ever. (I don't have a good scale for measuing it, but the length-weight chart for Rainbow Trout says a 20 1/2 inch Rainbow should weight around 3.2 pounds, or 3 pounds, 3 ounces.) After measuring the fish, I took a couple of honarary pictures of my wife with it. She is more photogenic than I am, anyway. It appears to be a wild Rainbow, with full fins and bright colors, and yes, we did keep it. I wasn't about to let this one go.:Big Grin: By the way, I am pretty sure the fish had come upstream from Silver Lake. It is also possible that it was one of the fish which was transferred from Caples Lake to Silver Lake last fall when Caples Lake was drained.
In other fishing, we caught a bunch of fish in Caples Creek, mostly 7-9 inch Brook Trout, plus a few Rainbows of similar size, in the upper creek, near Woods Lake, and several 10-12 inch Brown Trout below Caples Lake. Fishing was much better in streams than in lakes for us, perhaps because it was still early season there. There was lots of snow on the mountains, and they had been having almost daily thunderstorms for a couple of weeks, ending the day after we got there. We only caught 1 Brook Trout in Red Lake, 1 Brown in Silver Lake, and nothing in Caples Lake.
We did go fishing in Tahoe Keys, from the dock of one of my brother's friends, along with her son and my nieces, who are 6 and 7 years old. (We also took them to Silver Lake with us.) Well, I can officially report that the Tahoe Keys have been overrun with Bluegills. My brother was pretty pissed off, since they and other species introduced by "bucket biologists" have wiped out native species such as the Tui Chub. We wound up catching about 20 Bluegills in all, keeping most of them. (Bruce said the more we remove from the keys, the better.) I also caught a small Largemouth Bass there. There are also Smallmouth, Crappie, and most likely other Sunfish species such as Pumpkinseeds and Green Sunfish in the keys now. Fortunately, they seem unable to survive outside of the keys or other particularly shallow parts of Lake Tahoe. The predominant fish in the keys seem to be Bluegill, though. All of these non-native sunfish species were introduced illegally. :Sad:
I will try to post a few pictures. I have a bunch of pictures from the trip already posted on my blog site http://www.boxfreeblog.com The full description of this trip is still on my homepage, under "My Female Fishing Buddies." There are also reports from other vacation fishing we have done over the past year or so in the trip archives.
P.S. I had a "fishier" user name, but kept having trouble figuring out what was wanted for the answer to the random question, got frustrated, and wound up using the user name I use on a non-fishing website. Anyway, fishing is a nature activity, and I am a lefty.
Anyway, here is the brief version of the story of how I caught my personal best trout on June 20. My wife and I went to stay at my brother's house for a week in June. Fortunately for us, he lives at South Lake Tahoe. On Thursday, June 18, I found a spot on an inlet stream to Silver Lake, the reservoir near Tahoe, not the one in the June Lake Loop, where I lost 3 consecutive large Brook Trout, I would say in the 13-14 inch range. Frustrated, I went back to the car to tell Eunice about it. I thought she might have better luck there, so I went to get her pole from the car. When I opened the trunk, however, the key broke off in the trunk, and I was left standing there with only the nub of the key in my hand, no spare key, and no was to drive back to Tahoe.
Eventually, we managed to call my brother, Bruce, and he came to pick us up. By the time he got there, it was 9 p.m. We went back to Tahoe, and found a locksmith the next day, who agreed to go to Silver Lake and make new keys, for $200. While we were there, I showed the creek to my brother, who works fas a scientist for the California State Water Quallity Control Board. He determined that this creek was excellent trout habitat. My brother is involved in the project to restore Paiute Cutthroat Trout to their native habitat in the Silver King Creek drainage, so he has become something of an expert on trout habitat. We saw 3 large Brook Trout while we were looking at the creek, probably the same 3 I had lost the day before, but we had no fishing equipment this time.
I was determined to catch one of those large fish, so back we went the next day. It turned out that the Brook Trout no longer wanted to bite. I think I had inadvertantly given them "smart lessons." I went down the creek trying to find some willing fish, with no bites. I wasn't messing around; I was using a split shot, small worm hook, and garden worms, which seemed to be working the best. Finally, my first cast at a new pool, I had an immediate bite. I knew it was a big fish, especially when it swam straight at me and wallowed for several seconds by the shore in front of me. I could also see that it was a Rainbow. After that, it took off and went on various drag-screaming runs for several minutes. Finally, I had it tired out, put my net into the water, and the fish swam straight into it.
The fish was 20 1/2 inches long when I measured it, easily my largest trout of any species ever. (I don't have a good scale for measuing it, but the length-weight chart for Rainbow Trout says a 20 1/2 inch Rainbow should weight around 3.2 pounds, or 3 pounds, 3 ounces.) After measuring the fish, I took a couple of honarary pictures of my wife with it. She is more photogenic than I am, anyway. It appears to be a wild Rainbow, with full fins and bright colors, and yes, we did keep it. I wasn't about to let this one go.:Big Grin: By the way, I am pretty sure the fish had come upstream from Silver Lake. It is also possible that it was one of the fish which was transferred from Caples Lake to Silver Lake last fall when Caples Lake was drained.
In other fishing, we caught a bunch of fish in Caples Creek, mostly 7-9 inch Brook Trout, plus a few Rainbows of similar size, in the upper creek, near Woods Lake, and several 10-12 inch Brown Trout below Caples Lake. Fishing was much better in streams than in lakes for us, perhaps because it was still early season there. There was lots of snow on the mountains, and they had been having almost daily thunderstorms for a couple of weeks, ending the day after we got there. We only caught 1 Brook Trout in Red Lake, 1 Brown in Silver Lake, and nothing in Caples Lake.
We did go fishing in Tahoe Keys, from the dock of one of my brother's friends, along with her son and my nieces, who are 6 and 7 years old. (We also took them to Silver Lake with us.) Well, I can officially report that the Tahoe Keys have been overrun with Bluegills. My brother was pretty pissed off, since they and other species introduced by "bucket biologists" have wiped out native species such as the Tui Chub. We wound up catching about 20 Bluegills in all, keeping most of them. (Bruce said the more we remove from the keys, the better.) I also caught a small Largemouth Bass there. There are also Smallmouth, Crappie, and most likely other Sunfish species such as Pumpkinseeds and Green Sunfish in the keys now. Fortunately, they seem unable to survive outside of the keys or other particularly shallow parts of Lake Tahoe. The predominant fish in the keys seem to be Bluegill, though. All of these non-native sunfish species were introduced illegally. :Sad:
I will try to post a few pictures. I have a bunch of pictures from the trip already posted on my blog site http://www.boxfreeblog.com The full description of this trip is still on my homepage, under "My Female Fishing Buddies." There are also reports from other vacation fishing we have done over the past year or so in the trip archives.
P.S. I had a "fishier" user name, but kept having trouble figuring out what was wanted for the answer to the random question, got frustrated, and wound up using the user name I use on a non-fishing website. Anyway, fishing is a nature activity, and I am a lefty.