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Fished Yuba Sat. morning. We got to the state park at 6:30 a little later than we wanted to but the mattress had hold of our backs.
Fished till noon. Caught 6 northerns the largest being 25" long.
This is the first time fishing for them so we felt pretty good about how we did.
As we have not done it before it was pretty much a shot in the dark as to where and what. We trolled shoreline in the narrows over towards Painted Rocks, fishing slow with perch imitations.
I don't know if this is the ticket but at least we did something. We are looking at trying again so any help would be appreciated.
As a sidelight we brought a couple home and cooked them up. I don't know if it is how my bride cooked it or what BUT!!!!!!!!!! It was without a doubt the one of the best fish I have ever eaten.
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You did wise to troll, it covers a lot of ground.
Now, were you wise enough to figure out what each of the spots you hooked up in had in common? That would be an indicator of where they like to hang out. Was it near flat areas like points? Was it on drop offs? What was the depth and what depth were your lures running?
Questions to ask yourself.
Once you have an answer you may have a pattern and may want to take a bit of extra time at those kind of spots throwing lures, spinner baits, swim baits or jigs. Strain the water column from top to bottom and cast in a fan pattern from the outside to the inside.
If you hook up, this will give you another piece of the puzzle to unlocking Yuba pike secrets.
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Dude good for you thats not bad for someones first time fishing for pike at yuba the res is overrun by them. My freind was out there yesterday and he caught 14 pike from the shore with a rig that i showed him.Pike are also one of the best fresh water eating fish there is better than any trout. Its funny people pay thosands of dollars to go fish for pike in the northern states and we have a trophy fishery here in our back yard.Theres mostly of 20-30 inch pike in yuba so if you really want something big next time either use huge baits or lures .And what i mean by huge is a 12 inch lure or bait.That almost keeps those under 30 inchers of your line.I rather catch one bigun than a bunch of small ones.Oh by the way i would recomend hard lures i have gone through a bunch of plastic baits .[:p]
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That is super cool stuff right there. How did you prep them for the table?
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Did notice the structure type we hooked up in. Thanks for the good tips on narrowing down the search for next time.
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Big eats. The 25" fish had a 10" fish in his gut. A 12" lure has to cost quite and being a penny pincher I most likely will go into sticker shock looking at them.
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Kind of tough figuring how to get the y bones out but managed.
My bride made a little aluminum tray of tin foil the put butter, lemon pepper, and black pepper on them. Most likely was the butter that made them so good. Like bacon; butter makes everything better. We cook all fish on the BBQ so as to keep smells from house. I don't know if it was necessary with these as I did not notice any fish flavor nor odor at all.
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You can turn a big $3 spinner bait into a huge bait by adding a big rubber trailer. If it's a long thin trailer like a rubber worm it will not make the SB sink any slower, if you use a big flat frog like thing it slows the drop rate and increases the lift rate on the retrieve.
Also watch the bargin bins, many don't fish for pike and musky, so there is often some big baits in them.
Big spinners like Mepps and Blue fox are under $10, Salt water Rapalas are close to that, Storm wildeyes, big spoons are all good values. If your trolling run heavy line so you can retrieve if they get hung up.
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