Fishing Forum

[cool][#0000ff]TubeBabe and I hit Yuba yesterday. Launched our tubes from the main ramp about 7:30. Air temp 35, water temp 59. Clear skies and light breeze that eventually stopped completely and the lake became glass for most of the day.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]We started fishing the gravel shoreline west toward the dam. I was throwing 3" swimbaits in several colors and perch colored long crankbaits, trying for pike. She was mainly throwing spinners for trout. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Neither of us caught any trout...all day...but we did catch perch. Boy howdy did we catch perch. We couldn't find anyplace around the lake that they were not abundant. Nor could we find any lure they would not hit. There were few casts we made in less than 15 feet of water that did not result in either a perch, a double on perch or at least several hits on the retrieve.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]In the attached pics, I am including closeups of several perch I got on a variety of different lures. I kept fishing for pike, with plastics and hardbaits, and for trout, using spinners. But, other than one "bite-off" from a pike, neither of us had any action on any fish other than perch.[/#0000ff]

[#0000ff]There were only a few very small trout smacking the surface. No larger ones and none that wanted to dine on our spinners. After the first hour or so, TubeBabe went with the flow. She gave up on fishing for the no-show trout and rigged a tandem tube jig rig for perch. The rest of the day it was constant singles and doubles for her.[/#0000ff]

[#0000ff]I fished all along the dam and over to the south side shoreline, where the exposed rocky rubble goes down into the lake. The lake has dropped about 20 feet from high water. There was about a foot of water under the bridge and my favorite structure on the south side was mostly out of water. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]That didn't bother the perch. Everytime I cast a lure to the shore it was promptly smacked. For awhile, I put away my larger stuff and threw some small jigs at those aggressive perch. Caught a grundle, but average was from 7" to 9". Also caught a few about 5"-6". [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Saw lots of smaller ones in some spots, but no fathead minnows. It would seem that the baby perch are becoming the food base for the bigger perch. Some of the larger ones I caught spit up perch minnows as I brought them to the tube.[/#0000ff]

[#0000ff]About 11 AM, TubeBabe and I agreed (by walkie talkie) that we should probably take out and go over to Painted Rocks, just to see if there was something besides perch to catch. She began to work back along the shoreline, from where she had been fishing by the bridge. I took a straight line from the south shoreline toward the ramp. [/#0000ff]

[#0000ff]As I kicked out into deeper water I was amazed at what I saw on sonar. From 51 feet to the deepest spot I saw (57 feet) fish were stacked over the bottom. The average depth for most of the way across was about 53 feet, and there were fish from the bottom up to about 40 feet almost the entire kick back to the other side. I guessed that they were probably trout and big perch, waiting for the water to cool a few more degrees before heading back to the surface and the shoreline. [/#0000ff]

[#0000ff]Since I had neglected to screw any downriggers to my tube, I did not work the deep fish. Instead, I threw out a spinner and maintained a moderate kick rate to troll across the lake while eating my sandwich. Stupid perch wouldn't give me any peace out there in deep water either. Caught a couple of perch almost on top in over 50 feet of water. A couple of the boats trolling for trout had the same complaint. They had not caught any trout but had caught lots of perch.[/#0000ff]

[#0000ff]Ate a couple of slices of cold pizza back at the car and we headed for Painted Rocks. The lake was still glass and there was not another soul in sight when we got there. Lovely. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Hit the water from the gravel beach just after 1 PM and fished until about 4. The water temp was the same 63 we had left behind at the dam. No surface action here either, except for some tiny trout. Birds were diving on them in several spots.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]TubeBabe went west to the island and I went east, along the gravel beach, again throwing large plastics and hardbaits next to visible stickups, still trying for a pike. Still couldn't get my lures through the aggressive perch, so I gave up and started fishing just for perch...hoping some other misguided fish might take my offerings. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]TubeBabe and I were talking on the walkie talkie and she reported finding huge schools of nice sized perch around the island, taking quite a few in the 10 inch range. During one stretch she caught at least 40 or 50 doubles, with both fish being good sized.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Once I began focusing on perch, I caught a grundle too, but only a few doubles on my tandem rig. But, I had several sessions in which I was dropping straight down and lifting one or two perch back up at the rate of several per minute.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I caught both my smallest and my largest perch late in the day. The smallest was barely 5" and the largest I got to the tube was just over 11". I did have a couple of larger ones that did the standard open-mouth "perch shake" at the top of the water and gave me my jig back so that I wouldn't have to handle them and add to my "perch rash" on my hands.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I mentioned that several of the perch spit up small perch fry. One of the surprises of the day was when I grasped an average 9 incher and a minnow head popped out of its mouth. Only this minnow was a small trout. Apparently there has been a recent plant of trout fingerlings. The birds were having a great time with them...grebes, gulls and pelicans...and apparently the perch were finding them acceptable too. I am attaching two pics (TROUT DINNER) showing the ingested troutling.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I usually don't get hung up on fish counts. We have no way of knowing how many perch we actually caught, but our best estimates are that I probably caught over 150 and TubeBabe probably caught at least a hundred more. She fished them for fun on her light rod and was constantly into them. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]That means that between us we conservatively caught over 400 perch. I think it is safe to say that the perch population of Yuba is well established. We fished hundreds of yards of shoreline, at both ends of the lake, and we found hordes of perch everywhere we went. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Now, if the water cools down to about 50-55, maybe the trout will come out to play again. It will be interesting to see if the perch have decimated the fathead minnows to the point that they impact the growth rate of the rainbows. All of the big bows last year were stuffed with fatheads. This year we can't find any concentrations of the minnows so we will have to see whether the trout have found them...or an acceptable substitute.[/#0000ff]
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You be da perch catchin' machine! It really sounds/looks like the perch are in there thick! Make sure you take some photos with you to the big meeting! Thanks for the report.
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Sounds like you had a successful "factfinding" mission for Oct. 5th. Thanks for the report.
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So what do you think, would allowing anglers to keep 10 perch devastate the fishery or not? []
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[cool][#0000ff]I think the fishery is already devastated. The perch have overrun the lake and are eating all of the forage (fathead minnows). The traditional indicator that the lake was going into a downhill slide was when the perch were living on their own young. That is already the case after just a couple of years.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The problem is that there are not enough predators (walleye and pike) to even make a small dent in the exploding perch population. The perch are way ahead of the game and short of massive harvest by anglers will soon stunt. That will kinda ruin the hopes of being able to catch some more of the big toad perch we used to catch.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]My recommendation to RAC for a 10 perch limit was more in appeasement of the Rocky Mountain Anglers group, who oppose opening the lake to perch fishing at all. My personal opinion is that the lake could be open to a statewide 20 fish limit, or no limit at all, and still not suffer overharvest.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Thanks for asking.[/#0000ff]
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[] That pic of the finder is awesome! Looks like our sonar at Starvation over the perch schools. Didn't even try dropping a 3" tube down on those bad boys?
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[cool][#0000ff]I had not planned on doing any heavy duty vertical jigging so I did not bring my box of deep jigging stuff. I have some "perch urchins" and other jigging spoons that would have probably gotten some attention. I did try dropping down with a tandem light jig rig but it took a day and half to get to the bottom. Got a couple of taps, but not enough control and feel to git 'er done.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Last year it was about mid October when the water cooled enough to get the trout on top and active. My best trip was on October 22, when I caught a bunch of big rainbows and a couple of northerns. Two of my rainbows were right at 6 pounds. Here are some pics to whet our appetites for the next few weeks.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Planning to make a walleye run on Starvation about the second week of October. Know anyone who might wanna go?[/#0000ff]
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Sounds like good times... a good place to take us rookies out on eh?!? Hopefully next week we will have a break from some homework and have a chance to do some "catching" [] with you and tubebabe. []
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Thanks again for the awesome report! Hope that the RAC recommendation goes through for the 10-perch limit next year. Is the boat ramp still OK for launching boats?
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[cool][#0000ff]TubeBabe and I were talking about you guys, and what that kind of "catching" might do to/for you. You can catch many of those fish with an easy cast from shore. They are in close right now.[/#0000ff]
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[cool][#0000ff]The water level is still plenty high for launching at either the main launch or at Painted Rocks. Even though the water is down from the high water mark, it is still way above the bottom of the ramp.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]If you wanna help with the reg change, show up on Thursday at the board meeting.[/#0000ff]
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great report as allways dude! i only wish i had wether like that the 5 times i was over there in the last while.. [sly]

not to hard to find the perch tho is it?

i have not seen in any of catmans planting reports of any trout being planted in there for a while.. it could be one of this years brood from the spring spawn.. there was some fingerling tigers put in the first of the year but i don't think to many of them would have made it with the perch munching like they are in there right now! [sly]

maybe they should have put them in E-Lake insted they might have lived longer [crazy]
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I know your invitation was directed at Flycasting, but I'm planning on taking a few days off of work in a row within the first week or two in October, tossing the fishing tackle in the tin can, taking along a big cooler full of ice and Ziploc bags, hitching it all to the truck, and possibly hitting Strawberry, Starvation, and/or Pelican on a two-to-three-day road trip.

The wife said I could go, and all I'm waiting for is to get a big chunk of work completed so I can really enjoy myself while I'm away.

Wanna try and hook up, or is your dance card full for the foreseeable next couple of weeks?
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[cool][#0000ff]At one point we were talking about having a BFT mini floatilla at Starvation in September. Funky weather messed that up.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]If you know when you can be at Starvation, we can post a date and leave it open for anyone who wants to meet up and flog the fishies. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]I prefer midweek but at this time of year there are not the crowds on the weekends. To make it open to all, a Saturday would probably be best. Weather permitting, we could say Saturday, October 14'th, if it works for everybody else. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]October is WALLEYE month on many waters. Starvation is one of them. The fish are not big, but they are numerous and there is a 10 fish limit already.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Otherwise, I can be available with a couple of day's notice to do a meetup over there during the week, with TubeBabe and/or Flycasting. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Having fished with you before, I have deemed that you are good company and a fine fishing buddy. I ain't too proud to fish with ya again.[/#0000ff]
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[cool][#0000ff]I looked on the DWR planting record site and the last trout planting was on 3/15/06. They planted the tiger trout...no rainbows. The size then was 1.85 inches. The trout I squeezed out of that perch was just about twice that size. Unfortunately, the markings were hard to distinguish but it COULD be one of the little tigers. If so, you gotta wonder just how many of the original planters ended up as perch pizza.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Any chance of you getting up here next Thursday...for immoral support at the board meeting? You definitely have some history on Yuba and could contribute to the cause.[/#0000ff]
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[cool][#0000ff]Having fished with you before, I have deemed that you are good company and a fine fishing buddy. I ain't too proud to fish with ya again.[/#0000ff] [/reply]
[black][size 1]Gee, thanks. I guess different fishing buddies are like different species and sizes of fish. . .some ya keep, some ya throw back. I'll work very hard to be on my best fishing behavior when we're hitting a pond together, so I can maintain my "keeper" status.

What I'm planning is to finish up some crucial work between now and the middle-to-the-end of next week. Depending on the weather forecast, I'll likely take off a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday (Oct. 4th, 5th, and 6th or Oct. 11th, 12th, and 13th)--or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (Oct. 9th, 10th, and 11th). I'll probably hit just Starvation and Pelican, but I may throw in a Strawberry or possibly even a Jordanelle stop.

I likely won't be fishing any Saturdays around those dates, because after being away from my family for a few days, I'm sure I'll be wanting to spend the weekend with them.

Please let me know if any of those dates work best for you. I like one of the Wed., Thurs., Fri. options the best right now, with hitting Starvation on the first day (Wed.) of my vacation.

Hope this all makes sense. Looking forward to fishing with you if we can work it out.[/size][/black]
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[cool][#0000ff]Sent you a PM.[/#0000ff]
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i wish i could dude a realy do.. i realy wanted to be at the RAC meeting awile back as well... but inless you can get them to move it to St Cloud Mn it might be hard for me to get there!! [crazy]

on a cool note i got a millwright at the plant talked into taking me on a pike fishing trip to clear lake sometime next week.. [sly] if i can get some time off.. (he seen my BFT T shirt and asked if i liked to fish) it was on!! [cool]
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[cool][#0000ff]I never suspected that you were so wimpy. Plane fares are cheaper than gas so what's the problem?[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Good luck with the REAL northern pike. [/#0000ff]
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Bet you guys are very soar today from all those perchies.To bad you didnt get into any pike or walleyes.I am gonna give it a try on sunday but from the boat this time.Gonna explore some areas that i know hopefully i will get lucky.
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