Thanks for the comments and compliments everyone! Much appreciated, validates all my OCD note taking.
@HuskerRod, Thanks for the kind words, agreed it definitely is a tough body of water. If it wasn't for the fact that I had painfully studied navionics maps for fish-able structures, and seen the lake just a few weeks before I definitely would have been at a loss for where to start. ( The sheer scale of the lake is almost bewildering @>@ ) I had thought my finder wasn't picking up with all the algae and weed noise, but after we moved out a few times to the 30-50 range there were definitely fish out suspended from the points on staging structure, just too deep for me to target.
@DarkShadow Definitely, I believe the reason we finally got a catch was a combination of the terrain and lure coming together to cause a reaction strike as it climbed from the 11ft of water we had it diving in above the rocks up to the 7ft of water it was struck in directly off an underwater ledge on a point. Felt perfect action on the rod plus divers bill tapping rocks as it climbed over. Thanks for the suggestions I'll definitely be utilizing my data graphs next time so I can mark down readings that occurred during the strike and attempt to replicate.
@shinbob Thank you! Community posts have always given me the most insight. I just hope to carry on the tradition now that I'm capable of doing so. Thankfully DVL is located in the middle of 3 California weather stations, one to the NE, another S, and one more NW within like 30 miles of each other. So accurate readings are pretty easy to come by from NOAA or other weather monitoring services, best part being if you have an internet connection available on the lake you can see wind front updates several minutes before the actual effects of those gusts arrive, depending on whether the winds are coming from the SSW or have turned later in the day to NNE winds. Giving you ample time to find shelter or re-position for the incoming beating. In the future I'd like to get a barometer/anemometer combo device for accurate at the surface readings to more detail the above water conditions on a specific day. On the subject of water temp, definitely was a cold water day, had some pretty cold spurts of misty rain before 7am coupled with the highest air pressure of the week had probably pulled the cold deep water up into the cooling shore waters and not much sun to speak of to warm them up. I'd imagine this was one of the coldest water days in the recent few weeks and weeks to come.
I had totally forgot to mention the rod and line used, which is worth mentioning. We had started with 2 Medium heavy Bait Casters but eventually opted to use a much lighter rod and line in a Light action 6 foot rod with 8lb test braid on because of the action a heavier lure was giving on it as compared to our medium heavy rods. This definitely contributed to that strike as heavier rods were unable to keep anything we trolled in the water successfully.
Thank you again for the comments! Good luck and good fishing everyone~
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by HuskerRod
