Fellow director Steve "Stanley" Padilla asked me to take his brother inlaw Eddie out on New Melones in search of the infamous New Melones fatties. Eddie had only been koke fishing two or three times before, so I considered it my obligation to make sure he had a good time. We hit the H20 just after sun up and joined the Fishsnifferfest fleet out in front of the spillway. The bite was active as soon as we got our lines in the water with many good sized and small sized fish sharing the same depths. Unfortuntely, the bite died just after 9am and it was scratch fishing for the majority of of the day. The fish seemed to have moved from the locations they had coveted over the last several weeks as we never really marked the fish as thick as they were before. We moved over to the islands to meter for fish but wasn't satisfied with what I saw so we motored over to the western shore south of the dam. The fish were also marking sparse quite different from before but good enough marks to have us drop our lines in. Additionally, the fish had taken to open water as opposed to structure. The trick seemed to be to make sure to be trolling in 280-320 feet of water. We managed to have a short flurry of fish further south just outside of Bear Creek which lasted an hour or so. Another mixed bag of good and smaller fish but enough to keep my passengers busy reeling in fish. Pink tiger and solid pink spinners behind nickel Vances dodgers proved to be the ticket down 80-95 feet. The afternoon bite soon petered out so we trolled our way back to the spillway. At about 7pm, with the boat traffic gone, I noticed that the bigger fish had pulled up from the depths and had taken to the 50-70foot band. No sooner had I noticed this when our rods got busy again. Seemed like the darker it got, the more active the fish got. It didn't matter what we had down there, if it was in the water, it got bit. Unfortunately, we ran out of daylight and packed it in.
It was an all day affair to get good fish but well worth it with good company on board. It took a little more searching to find em, but a little challenge is healthy.
Here's a pic of Eddie and his limit-stick-o-fatties:
27 bottles of water and a dozen cans of lemonade later, we were tired and not much in the mood for pictures with a boat to clean up in the dark but we were satisfied with how the day traspired and the fish we earned.
It was another pink spinner day with UL pink tiger and pink glow spinners kickin tail most of the day along with Vances nickel dodgers and pink herringbone Slingblades. 80-110 feet was the average depth during the day and 55-70 foot deep later in the afternoon.
That's it for now.
-cpt Al
*** SHOW ME THE CHROME!! ***
Capt. Al Millan
Vice President, Kokanee Power
Skipper of the "Stimulus Package"
