Pruess Lake 7/2/2021

[joatmon]

Because we had tickets for a tour of Lehman Caves on Saturday July 3, I hauled my canoe out to Pruess Lake late in the afternoon on Friday July 2 in hopes of 1) catching a Sacramento perch and 2) exploring the lake.  Well, no luck on the 1st goal, as the only fish we enticed to bite in about 2 hours of fishing was a chub.  As far as goal #2, a stiff breeze from the south made exploration difficult.  We were able to drive down close to the water's edge and launched from the north end.  

So here's what we did and discovered:

• We fished the north half of the lake, by rowing out and anchoring, then drifting back a hundred feet at a time, re-anchoring, etc..
  
• The lake was about 3.5 deep at the deepest, but often shallower (it was never deeper than the length of our paddles).
  
• The bottom of the lake is quite soft (clay) and we didn't observe any vegetation where we were.
  
• With the wind blowing, the water was quite murky.
  
• We didn't see any fish surfacing or jumping.
  
• The lone chub was caught by jigging a nub of nightcrawler on a jig head right next to the canoe.
  
• I used my Ice 35 flasher to check depths and observe fish action.  It worked fine when we were anchored, but the shallowness of the lake made readings difficult.  I did observe a few other fish besides the one chub we caught.
  
• We had 1 or 2 other bites, all real light.
  
• We also fished with a bubble/bobber, with about 18-24" of line below it, terminating with a small jig tipped with nightcrawler or a small piece of chub.  We had no observed action when casting and retrieving these rigs or when casting and letting them sit.
  

I'm guessing earlier in the year the fishing would be better due to deeper water, closer to the spawn.  May have to try again next year or some other year, but didn't see much to get me excited to return.

[Fritzfishin]

I'll be out there from Thursday through Sunday so hopefully it gets a few feet of rain by then!

[joatmon]

I'll be out there from Thursday through Sunday so hopefully it gets a few feet of rain by then!

It will be interesting to see if you can find deeper areas.  We just didn't have time and it was a little brisk to be rowing our canoe into the wind.  Good luck on your trip!

[Fritzfishin]

Hit pruess today after 4 days of scouting. Ended up forgetting to buy worms in delta so used the only bait I could think of... a chunk of bacon... ended up with 3 small channel cats in about 30-40 minutes then had to hit the road. Also stopped at dmad and fished where the outlet is on the lake side since they're working on the dam and have the road fenced off I had a trailer and thats as far as I could go. Ended up with 10 mudcats all about 4-6" in 20 minutes and decided I had enough of that.

[joatmon]

Fritz, those are some small cats, but glad you didn't get skunked!  I need to get catchinon down to DMAD sometime with my canoe.  Not my highest priority right now though.

[Fritzfishin]

Fritz, those are some small cats, but glad you didn't get skunked!  I need to get catchinon down to DMAD sometime with my canoe.  Not my highest priority right now though.

Yeah dmad was EXTREMELY low, tons of small carp cruising around and couldn't keep the mudcats off the hook it was instant. You also can't drive further then the outlet for the river they have it gated off for work on the dam till November 2022, pruess was very low to, im going back the 29th-1st and gonna take my catfish rod, I found a ton of clams and saw a cat probably pushing 30" tail straight up in the air in guessing was sucking up smaller clams outta the mud? So I was gonna try some raw mussles maybe?