somebody complained somewhere that not enough of us actually fish.......so after yesterday i thought about reporting on a good day fishing...for me anyway...
we left the marina on lake pardee and spotted the thermocline at about 15 feet, so we trolled for a few hours above, below, and in the layer with no luck. pardee is one of these deep cold sierra snow melt reservoirs with awesome scenary, and lots of wary fish, many often leave skunked. visibility is often over 50 ft, and the fish see you before you see them.....you either have to troll 100 to 150 feet behind boat, cast for a country mile, or sit real quiet somewhere for a long time to let everybody (the fish) get used to you.
as the sun was warming stuff up we decided to forget trout and try bassin a couple coves up the river arm. long cast topwater action was good most of the day. i caught about 6 smallies ranging from 12 to 16 inches, 1 14-inch LMB, and about 4 spotted bass ranging from 12 to 15-inches....as the sun was going down i decided to try a new technique (for me) called drop-shotting. on our little fish finder we were seeing lots of smaller fish schooling near the bottom at depths of 18 to 20 feet - perhaps BG or crappie or small bass? I rigged up, dropped down and no sooner than the weight hit bottom it was attacked......10-inch spotted. i had three remaining crawlers that had survived some time in my beer fridge (pathetic really) but the fish didnt care, they gobbled up all of them so i went to small plastics (1-inch rainbow trout pattern grub). they attacked this as well. the best catch of the day for me was about a 7-inch red breasted sunny......absolutely beautiful fish and the only gill of the day
as i was discovering this technique to catch gills the park ranger was runnin around telling everybody to get off the water as the park was closing an hour early
Given how hard it is to catch fish at pardee....it seems like this technique would be very productive on ponds with hook shy fish.......sitting quietly in the boat and basically jigging in slow motion just off the bottom. the rig consists of a round weight as the terminal tackle (sized appropriately for depth, line wt, etc.... i used a 3/16 oz with 6lb test for 20 foot depths), and 1 or 2 hooks tied on the line (palomar knot) anywheres from 1 to 3 feet above the weight. the hooks have a special bend in them that you run the line through and it makes em stick straight out, perpindicular to the line. attach crawler or grub, drop rig to bottom, pick up slack, and jiggle it around.
has anybody else used this technique? i cant wait to get back out on the water.
