A tougher day at Lake Wohlford
There is nothing wrong with having a little confidence in any adventure you are about to embark on. (Friday trip to Lake Wohlford was no exception) A couple of trips back, I found Green Garlic power bait to be a superior bait for the Lake Wohlford trout. Technically the bait I was fishing was Rainbow Garlic power bait. But the jars I found at Big 5 were mostly green in make up. (So I called them Green Garlic power bait) In checking other stores that had Rainbow Garlic power bait, the jars they had weren't so green. So maybe the batch that I got was a defective batch. (I did buy all 5 jars they had) So I needed to find some more Green Garlic power bait. So I went to the biggest tackle store around to see if they indeed had some Green Garlic power bait. (They did and there was 3 choices that fit the bill) I bought the one that closest resembled that butchered batch of Rainbow that is working so well. In true scientific comparison, I had my fishing partner Phil be the control group in testing the bait against each other. I had him put on the identical line that I have and also use the same hooks and weights. (plus the bite on garlic dip) We were all set to give this a try.
No back to the confidence thing. I thought this Friday at Lake Wohlford was going to be an easy slam dunk. Everything was going to be perfect, the wind, they stocked on Wed, it hadn't rained and it was going to be a bright sunny day. We got there at the usual sleep in special time "noon!!" (a little too much over confidence) As soon as we got there, "my Spidey senses went crazy!!!" This is not right!!! Something is wrong at the lake!!! My friend Phil is much newer to fishing and asked whats wrong with the lake??? The boats on the lake are all in the wrong spots. If the fish are biting, there should be 3-4 boats in Boat Dock cove. (which there was none) There will be 2-3 Fly fishing boats in the East end (which there was none) and most of the other boats will either be shore pounding for Bass or near the East end. Instead the boats were all in random spots that made no sense. (they were grouping for any thing) The most logical reason for this madness was they didn't stock. But I got some reports from Lake Dixon and their on the same stocking schedule and bus as Wohlford. (so I doubted that was the case)
We headed down toward the East end and started doing our drifting thing. Same place same Bat channel. (The last air ratter to the reeds) On our first drift, Phil caught a nice hard fighting #2 Rainbow trout on the old bait. On the next drift Phil got bit again and missed the fish. I then ran into an old friend down there and they fished the morning and caught 6 trout all on Mice tails. (not great, not bad) They took off and went home to beat the traffic and other then 1 other boat who was drifting up higher, we had the whole East end to ourselves. Phil got a couple of more good bites and missed them both and your's truly on the new bait hadn't even got a bite!!!
With just a couple of hours left to fish, I switched back to the old bait. In the next hour I made several perfect drifts in high producing area's and neither one of us didn't even get a bite. With 1 hour to go, we had only 1 fish and a "Hail Mary plan!!" Phil suggested we go catfishing in our last hour of time. (catfishing been tough this year at Lake Wohlford) But I did have a plan!! (I always have a plan) At 4:00 pm the wind was going to back off to almost nothing. We were then going to fish half-way from the Buoy's to the reeds off of the 2nd buoy. (That was our last trip hot zone) We drifted in there earlier but at a much quicker speed, this time we were going to do it really slow.
Right on schedule the wind die down and we were in business. It didn't take 5 minutes and I hooked and landed a nice hard fighting #2.5 Rainbow trout. I told Phil to cast towards the reeds these things are cruising right along them. A long story short, we caught 5 of them in the last hour of fishing along the reed line. The horn sounded and we had 6 trout in the boat, not limits but not a total disaster either. These were all pretty decent fish and very hard fighters. Had I not wasted half of my fishing time with totally worthless bait. We might have still gotten close to limits. That reminds me of a gag in one of the funniest movies of all time. (Airplane) In the movie Loyd Bridges keeps making a reference to this was a bad week to quit smoking, quit drinking and to quit sniffing glue! (I also picked the wrong week to try to test out a new bait!!!)
When we got back to the Boat dock, I asked the attendants what happened to the trout bite??? If you thought today was tough, you should have been here Wed & Thurs said the attendant!!! It's was horrible!!! At least today people caught a few trout, before that it was almost "ZIP." I asked them did they stock on Wed??? They had but the only explanation they had for the trout not biting, was a rise in the water temperature might have had something to do with it. They are going to stock the next 2 Wednesday's in a row with trout but some rain is coming next week. So it may not be the stupid trout bite I thought it was going to be. Stay tuned!!! I'm still going to give it a go, but I'll bring some catfish bait with me just in case!!
Tight lines till the next report.
