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Thread: P/B Crappie and quality trout at Lake Isabella

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    Default P/B Crappie and quality trout at Lake Isabella

    This was an interesting trip to say the least. It was only intended to more or less be a fact finding trip and to prove a few points to my 2 fishing partners. (Glenn and Phil) It was not designed to be one of my famous slay fest trips, but instead to learn a few things. All my adult life I have fished lake Isabella from a private boat while staying at my friend Dan's place. (He owns property in Bodfish) We always made the trips weekend trips or longer. My relationship with my friend Dan changed quite a bit since his wife passed away. (It's still good but much different) So now if I want to fish Isabella with my current fishing partners we have to start from scratch. That's why I called it a fact finding trip. I know how to fish the lake from a boat, but where do we stay, where do you get the bait and can you fish it from shore. Were just some of the questions my friends asked, but I only know how to fish it from a private boat staying at my friend Dan place. If you try to rent a boat that's a whole other story I'll get too. So this was going to be a turn and burn 12 hour trip. Fish for 4 hours in a boat, look at the lower Kern river and burn home. I'm going to document the trip, so people may learn something if they want to give it a try next year. For almost all intense of purposes the bite is already over for this year!!! It was a good bite and it lasted almost 2 months. For Crappie fishing I think it's the 2nd best Crappie lake in the state besides Clear lake. Don't try to tell me about the 8 day's it was biting WFO somewhere else. (Good Luck in timing that for next year) lol They also have their Big trout derby in Lake Isabella in April every year just when the Crappie start to bit. So you can get 2 species of fish in the lake to fish for after their trout derby. Why didn't we go when the bite was on earlier you might be wondering???? (2 reasons) The first reason was our success last year at other places. (the Aqueduct, Barrett lake, Casitas and DVL to name a few) We all went back this year to a big fat slap in your face at those places. (the bite sucked!!!) Plus my friends don't believe in the prophet's words. If the fish won't come to you!!! You must go to where the fish are biting!!! My friends wanted to stay closer to home and go to cheaper fishing locations the last 2 months. Boy did we pay a price for that attitude. The whole time Lake Isabella is going WFO, we are icking off some where else!!! See why I'm calling this a fact finding trip for next year???? I could tell you about 8 disaster trips we had in the last 2 months but why bother!

    On to the adventure!!!

    Once we got to the lake, we rented a boat and headed off to Rocky point to look for some Crappies. In my past experience at Lake Isabella I found the trout to be particular fond of my tormentor lure trolled on leadcore line. Sure enough blasting out of the Marina I got bite by a nice Rainbow trout. I asked Phil if he wanted her and he said, "let's take a look at her?" She was a full tail healthy looking trout and Phil wanted to she how she would taste back home. Once we got to Rocky Point I metered around a little looking for some fish. I found a few in a couple of spots and over the anchor went. Phil immediately got bite on a live minnow, I expected to see a nice Crappie coming up. Nope it was another nice trout!! I threw my mini jig back there and got bite and farmed it!! Darn I missed that one and cast again in the same direction. Got bit again on another really nice trout but landed this one. We fished awhile longer there and didn't hook anything else but the trout were jumping everywhere. I told Phil, if we stick it out longer here I think we will get some more trout. But we really came to catch some Crappies. (we caught a ton of trout this season at lake Wohlford) So we pulled the hook and started metering around for some Crappies. I found another area that had some fish on the graph and we gave it a go. Sure enough, Phil got bit and it was a Crappie!!! (we found them) They weren't very big but they were Crappies. It was steady action for awhile but I wanted to try one more spot before calling it a day. I told Phil to pull the anchor and let's look around for a better school of fish. As soon as he got the anchor up the fish graph lit up with fish. I should have told him to drop the anchor down again, but instead I casted out my Mini jig. I got bit immediately and it pulled a little drag! I told Phil, "I got another trout" boy was I wrong!!!!! As it came closer to the boat, I could see it was a Slab Crappie!!! (we should have dropped the anchor because it might have been a whole school of them) I told Phil to net this one and we will release her if she's in good shape. She was such a pig, she swallowed the Mini jig down to her stomach. I tried to be as gentle as I could in removing the jig, but she still ended up bleeding so we did end up keeping her. (no point in throwing back a fish that will probably die) Well at that point we headed in, we still had some exploring to do on the lower Kern river for some Small Mouth Bass.

    When we got back to the Marina the boat attendant asked if we caught anything? I told him we did pretty good, with some nice trout and some taco size Crappies and a personal best Crappie. He gave us this funny look and asked us again, did you really???? I was kinda of insulted and said, what we look like we can't catch beans or something??? No No he said, nobody's caught anything the last few day's was his answer!! Well that's because we weren't fishing then, I joked back at him. The lady at the dock took my picture with the Crappie and sent it to my phone. It is a really good picture!!! She was even spawned out, so when we weighed her at home. She was #2.7 pounds without being full of eggs, I wonder what she would have weighed with eggs? I know I'm being greedy!!! lol

    That's our story and we learned enough to make sure we go next year when they are really biting!!!
    Last edited by etucker1959; 06-04-2018 at 10:16 PM.

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