Memorial Weekend - Irvine Lake Part II

[Granny Fish]

After a successful Friday trolling ... Mr. G-Fish, One Leg and I decided we were in for another great day of catching on Saturday.

P.J. party at my house Friday night with One Leg... which included prank calls to our buddy Trollmeister in the middle of the night. He returned the favor next morning leaving a message on my cell, "This is a courtesy call from Irvine Lake tackle shop. Irvine Lake will be closed Saturday in order to drain the lake." Although the call sounded ligit, we were already on Trolly's spot at the treehouse.

Air temp was a nice 80 degrees - Water temp was metered at 72 degrees. Trout season won't last much longer for this lake with things warming up. The majority of the trout were hanging at 35 - 40 feet in front of the dam. They are there if you can reach them...

Here is a picture off Trollmeister point looking towards the dam.


We met up with Trout Only, another friend of ours who runs a guide service locally, who had the day off and seemed to be enjoying himself fishing for fun (what a concept). Later Trolly floats in and calls the fish in. "Here fishey, fishey, fishey. Come and get it! Free food - all you want, come and get it!" Within the minute after the fish call, One Leg gets his winning fish at 4.4# placing him 3rd in the tournament. Winning him a big $156 dollars. Shortly after One Leg helped me to farm a nice drag screamer that ran the shoreline and tangled everyone's lines. He thought he was hooked up and sawed me right off. I won't be letting him live that down for a while.

This is what a $156 fish looks like. Congrats One Leg!
Still waiting for the dinner you promised me....



Later Trolly took me out to show me some leadcore trolling tips and how to meter fish. All of a sudden my line starts screaming! Trolly says, “You got one, start reeling”! Man, reeling in leadcore is like draging a log off the bottom. Then we notice some friendly people jumping and waving at us on a pontoon about 30 yards behind. You probably guessed it, we had caught their pontoon by the anchor rope.

While out trolling we seen this guy trolling with a nice kick boat set up.


Back on shore were were fishing inflated crawlers and Berkley Gulp, chunky cheese flavor. Chunky cheese was the hot trout bite for the day. The baby bluegill loved our worm offerings. Most everyone had limits by the end of the day... except me.

Trolly’s Bluegill


The catfish decided they wanted to play too. Mr. G-Fish hooked in to this healthy 2 + pounder just before we called it a day.

Mr G-Fish’s Catfish


Sunday was much the same. All the usual characters showed up. The bite was much slower than the previous two days. Mr. G-fish managed a limit of average stocker sized rainbow about 1.5 # each off the point. Despite all my efforts the fish gods didn't smile on me this day and I went home with the weight of the skunk on my back.

Our buddy, Trout Only had a client at Diamond Valley lake. About 9 AM T.O. calls Trolly to say his client landed a nice 8# hold over rainbow and was stoked.
Here's Trollmeister getting the minute by minute fishing reports.



Until next time... tight lines.

[SilveDreamDave]

Gr8 report Granny and snaps,sounds like you had a real wknd of it. Dont ya just love it. I could go fishing every day. When I first started looking after the Private Salmon Fishery here in Ireland, the first year I had three days off within the season. Season is from the first of February to the last day of September. And the three days I was away I phoned to see what was happening.