Thursday, February 23, 2012

Lake Berryessa Trout

With the weather forecasted to be in the 70's I decided it was a great day to go fishing yesterday. I got to Lupine Shores at 7:45 and was on the water by 8. 






I started off trolling with a Dodger and a rubber worm. As I turned the point I run into Ken Jan an NCKA member who had been on the water for a while now. I asked him how he was doing and he said that he caught one right when he launched but wasn't having anymore luck. We went on our own ways and said we would meet up later. I hit all the spots that I had gotten bites from the Presidents day weekend but had no luck. So I decide to go back to the launch and see if I could get any bites there. I decided to put a spinner on one of the rods to see if that even had a fighting chance. There were fish jumping but none of them were biting at the spinner.


At this point I see Ken Jan getting back into his boat from the launch and heading toward me. I asked him if he wanted to go further out and he said sure. So we headed out the main body of water, Ken Jan paddled in front of me while I made a change in bait. This time I decided it was time to have a night crawler behind the Dodger on at least one of the rods. During the time I switched baits, Ken Jan had hooked another fish. He was killing it in his sit inside kayak. 






When we turned the point there were fish jumping everywhere. So I started to troll and hoping to get a bite. Not very long after I see that I am getting some good bites but nothing is sticking. This is the most action I have gotten all day so I keep trolling, and then Bam fish on. As I bring the fish to the boat, I grab my net and as I am about to net it and the fish gets loose, it was so close it even touched the kayak. :smt012 It was my bad on the netting skills. 

So at this point I am thinking this whole basic setup of the Dodger and the night crawler is working great, and I need to set up both rods the same. I troll all the way to the shore and begin to circle around to repeat the same thing. As I am going back on my route I realize that there is boat coming straight at me and I decided to just keep trolling and I will be able to pass them and get my lines out of the way. They are about 15 feet behind me when I here one of my rods just let loose, so I go to pick it up and start reeling, the boat yells out "don't worry you don't have to move your line" not realizing that I had a fish on. Then all of a sudden as I am reeling in the line, the other rod starts tapping and fish on. The fish on the first rod ends up snapping the line but its ok, I still have the other rod to work with. This time I was able to land the Trout and it was my first Kayak trout. It felt good to finally get one on the boat :smt007. At this point I felt confident in my setup and it was working great. I quickly rigged up both rods to keep on trolling. 




It was already 1 in the afternoon and I was supposed to leave at 12 to let my dog Melo out, so I decided it was time to head back to the launch but I would still troll on the way in. Right as I was about to turn the corner the line goes again and its fish on. This time I am able to get the fish in the net fairly easy and it ends up being bigger then the first one and measured in at 15.5". Even though I could have kept fishing I was already late and decided to just pull all the lines out of the water and paddle in. 




The whole day was awesome and it was great to be able to Paddle with Ken Jan who lives in New York and visits California part of the year. I had met him at the fish and chill this past weekend and it was great to fish with him again.  He got his limit by the time we got off the water.  


Lupine Shores is a great spot to Launch a kayak from. They don't have a boat launch fee just a day use fee which is $3.15 per person or per dog. The one downside of Lupine Shores is they have no potable water so make sure to bring some and they have portable bathrooms. 


When I got home Melo was so excited to see me and ran to the door before I could even ask him if he wanted to go out. 


-Victor Woolworth


Here are some more photos of the Day:











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