Hope you all had a great weekend wherever you were. I had plans of camping in the Golden Trout region of the Sierras from Friday thru Monday.
Friday Mr. G-Fish reluctantly had to work. I on the other hand had the good fortune to start Memorial Day weekend early and determined I would spend the day fishing even if I had to do it alone.
My friend, whom I call One Leg, mentioned wanting to go trolling Irvine Lake. Since I had no prefence and the lake is close to home, I offered to swing by to get him. We arrived at the lake about 6:30 AM. We stopped in the tackle shop to pick up some of those breakfast burritos they are famous for and wasted no time in getting our boat.
It was a beautiful morning on the lake, with a bit of a marine layer early which turned into a beautiful day with temps in the high 70's and only the slightest breeze that only makes a warm day enjoyable.
There were only a few boats on the water, and few anglers on the shore. The water was clearer than I've seen in a long time.
Being that I hadn't much experience in trolling, One Leg schooled me on the finer points of lures and set ups for trolling. My teacher must have known what he was talking about because no sooner had I gotten my line out I was hooked up. This was my largest for the day (2.4#). I had two more hook ups shortly afterwards.
This is what they were after...
I even got a lesson in fish cleaning which I quickly adopted.
We were told that most of the fish were hanging about 35 ft below. Since we had no down riggers or leadcore to get us deep we had planned to troll the early part of the day on the surface and to anchor to shore and bait fish. Our planned location... a spot we like to call Trollmeister's Treehouse, however; someone had already beat us there, so we trolled a while longer.
By 3 PM our planned spot became available and the bite was WFO for One Leg with crawlers and he caught 4 before the lake patrol came by to chase us off the lake. A few more minutes and he would have had his limit. He was catching fish even as he was unhooking them.
We ended the day, both of us one fish shy of our limit. With our fish all cleaned and on ice we headed to my house for fish dinner and to share our adventures with Mr. G-Fish who had just returned from work.
We told stories and joked with each other into the late hours of the night until we all decided to go back to the Vine in the morning for the Saturday tournament. But that's another chapter of the story to be told.
Until next time... happy fish tales.
