Fishing Forum

A couple of friends from school and I fished Strawberry on Saturday--along with a very large number of other people. We caught a fish early on Haws point, but after that it was very quiet till we got to the area between Renegade and the entry to the narrows--mostly fishing the southernmost part of the lake. We started marking fish on the sonar again, and also started to catch fish. We caught twelve more in a couple of hours, but then lost the bite in the mid-afternoon and never relocated a group of feeding fish. We ended with 13--two rainbows and the rest cutthroats.

A couple of stray observations:

(1) The countdown rainbow rapala was again the bait of the day. I took one fish on a sparkle bugger (size 10), and another on a brook trout rapala, but otherwise nothing else worked. Every time I found fish on the graph, I would try jigging with the canonical white tube jib tipped with a night crawler. I have yet to catch a fish on that combination. I am going to stop bringing night crawlers because I am losing faith in it. I also tried a Castaic minnow in rainbow color, which to me looks like the most beautiful imitation of an injured trout that I could imagine. No fish on that, either. Maybe the vibration of the rapala is important?

(2) I cannot buy a bite on a worm harness/spinner rig. Maybe I'm not trolling them at the right depth? I vary the weight in front of it, but I never have it right on the bottom (most of the fish we are marking are suspended).

(3) Location seemed very important. We never hooked a stray fish when we not marking fish on the graph. A lot of the lake seemed very empty to me. We registered a lot of fish on Haws Point, and consistently saw fish around Renegade and on a few secondary points in the narrows--but there was a lot of empty space as well. If I had to do it again, I think I would try pulling the rods out and just roaming around likely spots in search of some fish. Trolling blind was a waste of time.

(4) We rigged up a dry fly in the calm of the morning, and it was as though the act of bringing it out caused the wind to kick up. In the 10 minutes it took, the water went from flat to choppy. I also have yet to catch a fish on a mouse pattern at Strawberry.
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Forgot an obligatory picture. No big fish at all for us, as this photo attests. Don't get them every time. Guess that's what makes it exciting.
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Thanks for the report. Now that it's November, I am hoping to see those large groups of fish start appearing like they do in years past.

I went up last week and caught them on the "canonical" fall rig. for me, that set up always works better when there is a little chop in the water....
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Thanks for the thorough report. You're experience was similar to mine when I fished up there a week and a half ago. Lots of dead water and only caught fish that we saw on the graph. We went all over the lake that day. Our best lures were woolly buggers that we trolled around. We even ran some rigs that we've had some 100+ fish days on without much luck. Tried lots of jigging as well without much success. My question is how is the algae situation up there now? Is it still pretty bad or has it cleared up a lot? Also, are the fish hitting the lure once and running or did they keep coming back for it?
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There was a fair amount of algae around Renegade--but that was also where we caught the fish. The narrows was clear, and the Soldier Creek side seemed clear as well.

Last time I was out I did have several fish hit the lure multiple times before hooking up. There was less of that--and maybe not a single case--this last Saturday. All of our hookups were from a single strike, if memory serves.
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Thank you for the response. I was thinking of heading up there this weekend but I think I'll wait til next week and see if anything has changed.
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