11-01-2016, 04:04 AM
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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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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