One of the beautiful things about living in SacTown is a day trip up the mountain to escape the heat and do some fishing.
Our stop before our destination :-)
So the last Fishing Friday, the 8th of August, I decided to head up to Caples Lake to a spot behind the dam. I haven't fished at this location for at least 5 years....
The crew and I got there around 10:30 AM and lobbed out about six poles with Berkley power eggs. We waited about an hour and not one fish nibbled.
Clear skies at 10:30 AM.
I walked to my left and spoke to a fisherman that was there before we arrived. He didn't get a bite either. Came to find out, the fisherman is from the same town as I. However, I finally found a fisherman with more super powers than I. He left SacTown at 3:00 AM to get to the lake by Dark Thirty!!! That is so very awesome! We exchanged information and cell numbers for future fishing trip, then I proceeded to hike along the shore with a 1/16 Panther Martin, behind a 2-foot leader, with an 1/4 oz. sliding sinker.
"Watch the poles," I instructed the kids.
Along the shore at 12:30 PM.
Along the shore at 1 PM.
Another view at 1 PM.
About a mile in and a lot of casts, but no bite, surrounded by all the beauty, it was very difficult to head back.... But head back, I did.
I was greeted by the children around 2 PM with an interesting story of the one tiny trout on the stringer. It mounted to no one was watching the line :-) The Fishing Ninja was credited with the safe, by walking out to the stump where the fish wrapped itself.
The children are out of school and back home. Yeah!
On Friday, July 1st, we went to fish at Pinecrest Lake, elevation 5,600 feet. We were at the lake by 10 AM. There were plenty of parking spaces; however, by noon there were no more parking spaces: The early bird gets the worm. WizTech, his sister and nephew visiting from Tennessee, also accompanied JU, Mrs. Miracles and the Miracle Squad. We got a great location on the beach under shaded trees. The lake looked very fishable. While the group chilled at the beach, JU went around the East side of the lake looking for a family friendly place to fish. There was a fantastic trail to hike around the lake. It was said that the easy hike around the lake would take 2 hours. I did not attempt it :-) There was not really any friendly fishing place that can accommodate our big group within a 30-minute hike. We mainly looked around and the children swam a bit. WizTech, Ms. Princesa, and I fished for an hour with one hookup, but none landed.
Note for the next trip: bring inflatable boats. Also, we got a tip to hike to the inlet on the east side of the lake, about an hour hike, to catch the big one. I believed it better just to bring a boat and paddled over :-)
Time to head back down the mountain.
Panorama video of the beautiful lake before the crowd:
On Friday, 6/24, it sure was nice to be up at Mosquito Lakes where the temperatures were in the low 70s as compared with SacTown where the temperatures were near or above 100.
I learned from my brother "da PRO" many moons ago to swap out treble hooks for single hooks on crank bait lures. I borrowed this same concept and swapped out trebles hooks for single hooks on trout spinners!
Will these work?!?
Of course, WizTech and I had the Miracle Squad with us, so we must setup regular fishing poles for them to catch fish while I experimented.
We left home at 7 AM, had breakfast at 8 AM in Valley Springs, and arrived at our destination at 11 AM. Note that the breakfast time could be shorter for the next trip.
I went to our favorite spot at the Upper Mosquito Lake and tossed in four poles for the group. Immediately, it was fish on! Mrs. Miracles and the kids had a blast landing fish after fish. By 11:30 AM, we had our first limit! These were between 11 and 13 inches!
Master Fisherman displaying the first limit!
The next limit came at 11:30 AM.... Awesome! Compared to the fish at Loon Lake from last week, the smallest fish from Mosquito was equal to the biggest from Loon!
WizTech with the second limit @ 11:30 AM.
At 1 PM, there was a big hit on one of the poles and the Monk set the hook and landed the biggest fish of the day: a 14 incher!
Let me show you how to hold it!
Like this?
From noon to 2:30 PM, the bites slowed down tremendously and winds picked up. We managed another three and packed up to head down the mountain.
JU's Experiment
I went between Upper and Lower Mosquito Lakes with lures to entice some trout. At Upper I had three hookups, but only managed to land one on the Thomas Buoyant at 12:30 PM. This was consistent when using single hook: more difficult to land fish.
This 12 incher fell for the Thomas.
I proceeded to the Lower Mosquito to try out my new rigs: the spinners with single hooks. I never had success with Panther Martin spinners in the past. So I tried this first, the smallest of the spinners on the right hand side from the first picture.
I found a stream running into the Lake. About 10 feet away was a big boulder sticking out 3 feet above the lake surface. This was deep beautiful clear water. First cast with the Panther: Fish on!!! Tornado, what the heck swallowed the lure? The drag from my fishing reel screamed! My pole bent over! I knew it was a big fish because my drag was set in such a way that only a big 3 pounder at least could have pulled it out! On yeah, baby, the fish surfaced. This confirmed my intuition. I have never caught anything big like this before with a Panther. From a distance of 15 feet, I could tell, it was not a rainbow trout, looked more like a brown trout. I didn't think any big fish like this existed in this little Mosquito Lake!!! Then it happened. The fish went left toward the big boulder 10 feet away. I tried raising my pole high and herding the fish away, but it wouldn't have it. Behind the boulder it went. Within seconds after that, my line broke :-( When I got my line back, it was frayed badly by the boulder where it broke!
Trout 1, JU 0!
Unfortunately, since this was an experiment, I did not bring another Panther like the one I lost. Thus, I tied on the second rig, the white with red dots lure in the middle of the the first picture. Before using it, I moved it back and forth in front of me to make sure that the blade was spinning properly. I was satisfied.
First cast with new rig, fish on again. Not as big as the first. No drag screaming, but hey, fish on, baby! Within a few seconds, fish off :-( For the next hour, I had a total 5 hook ups. They fought for a few seconds each, then fish off. My conclusion was that the single hook on the snap swivel somehow enabled the fish to shake off easy. No need for me to try out the last lure because it also had a single hook on the snap swivel.
Trout 5, JU 0!
I can't wait for the next time. I will modify the single hook to be on the double split rings like I did with the Thomas Buoyant!
Video Section
For now I will leave you the following two videos featuring Master Fisherman (Age 11) and "little j" (Age 7).
Master Fisherman had a dancing technique to catching fish.
"little j" was more serious when it comes to landing fish.
Got a blessed opportunity to go fishing today, Friday, 6/17. Left my home at 7 AM with 6 children, 4 of my own and two on loan. I met up with WizTech at a McDonald's in Placerville to treat the kids to breakfast. I decided to visit Loon Lake, which was another hour drive away. The last time I was there was probably more than a decade ago when I did not own a Garmin and relied on hard copy of a map to get to my destination :-)
WizTech and his two friends finished breakfast first, so I said to go to the right hand side of the boat ramp at Loon Lake and I will follow after the children finished with their breakfast. I left McDonald's around 9 AM confident that I would get to the designated location by 10 AM. On the way to Loon Lake, as I drove past familiar territory such as Ice House Reservoir, my Garmin was excellent. However, beyond that, it went crazy and directed to go to all sorts of roadways. I stopped twice and got directions from strangers and finally arrived at the Loon Lake dam by 10 AM. I knew it was not the designated meeting place, but the view was fantastic and I had not been here before, so it was a photo op place and to give the children a break from the windy road.
Pardon me, sir. How do we get to the boat ramp?
Boys will be be boys
It is a little colder @ 6,000 feet up.
View from Loon Lake dam.
Let's go fishing now.
I got information from a camper that the boat ramp that I was looking for was only half a mile away, but in the opposite direction of my travel :-) So back down the mountain I went. Once again, my Garmin was no help. I relied on my Lord the Holy Spirit to guide me. Yes, just like that, I found myself entering the boat ramp location within 10 minutes. It almost threw me off that the entrance fee for day use was $8.00 per vehicle per day. I know there was no fee a decade ago. However, the camp host was kind enough to let me check to make sure my party was already by the boat ramp before I committed. Yes, by then it was 11:30 AM, Wiztech and friends just limited out!!! What a blessing!
We set up rods for the children and for the next couple of hours, they had a blast goofing around and landing fish left and right.
An extraordinary thing happened while I was there. I threw my first cast out using the Z and it was fish on! No, that's not the amazing thing because I was spoiled with the success of the Z. As I turned to my left I ran into familiar faces: my fishing buddy the Pacman and another friend from my previous work! What joy to run into friends at this leisure site. So much to catch up on, I talked more than I fished.... And, it was all worth it. Hope to see you again 'round the mountain in the near future.
If I am blessed, we will meet again.
As I mentioned, I had two children on loan with me: the Fishing Wonder, which already went fishing with me before and now introducing the Fishing Ninja, the fish never saw him coming. I got Fishing Ninja to catch his first fish and brought a limit home to share with his family. How awesome was that?!?
First Fish!
Hey, is that the Z?
Fishing Wonder
The fish tried to swim away with the stringer.
??? Right in front of the fishing zone ???
:-)
What a feeling! I'm done with High School!
What a blessed day!
So I left the house at 7 AM and didn't get to fish until 11:30 AM and by 2 PM still managed to get the kids to land some fish, which reminded me of a saying from Kayaks with Beavers: "Results matter!"
I leave you now with a video clip of the Fishing Ninja and his first fish: it didn't see him coming.
The first time we camped at Sunset Beach State Park was 2008. That was a fantastic year for surf fishing. With light fishing gear, my two oldest daughters and I caught several barred perch our first time surf fishing. We thought it was so easy. We were wrong.
Now in 2016 with the two oldest in college and having no time to fish with the old man, we managed another great year of surf fishing. After dinner, on Friday, May 27th, the WizTech and I went down with a new surf rig: 8-lb mainline; 8-lb, 2-foot leader; number 4 bait holder hook; Berkley 2-inch camo sandworm; and an 1-oz. sinker.
A picture is a thousand words.
Results: First cast, fish on! We got a bite almost every cast: we either loose a part of the sandworm, miss a hookset, or fish on! We quit at 7 nice perch.
I think we are starting to get it.
The following day, Saturday, we setup our two new friends from camp with the same rig and the result was a total of 18 perch for the four-member team.
Sunday around noon, we went fishing for monkeyface eel. We got 15!!!
First monkeyface eel for fisherman on the right.
Sunday evening, I went back to surf fishing. I went to my favorite spot by the log and got a small perch on the first cast. I threw it back thinking that it was going to be another fantastic surf fishing day. A few minutes later, it was fish on! I felt a heavier pull. "This must be a one pound perch," I thought to myself. When it was landed, it was a jacksmelt instead. However, Young Master (see the "Legends" tab) was having a great evening. While fishing with me, he landed five perch, including the one that was let go. I made a mental note that Young Master was using a different bait; he was using Hammer Perch Grubs.
Jacksmelt fell for the perch rig.
Monday morning I fished for an hour and landed another two perch. The awesome thing besides the fishing was that I got to see two killer whales, a lot of sea lions, and a 48-inch dead striped bass on the beach. The striped bass had been a recent kill and the thought did cross my mind regarding bringing it back to camp and impress everyone with the "catch of the day." However, it was heavy, and I couldn't think of an easier way to haul the fish back up the long steps to camp :-(
Kayaks with Beavers caught two baskets of strawberry.
In summary, the weather for this year was fantastic! Day temperatures were in the 70s, while night temperatures were in the low 50s. The wind was not blowing hard as previous years. The company was awesome as usual and the food plentiful! We gotta figure out a way to scale down on the food. And another great year of fishing. Thanks be to God!
Yesterday, the team left JU's home at zero six hundred hours (6 AM) and came back at seventeen hundred hours (5 PM) for an eleven-hour fishing trip!
They fished at Discovery Park until twelve hundred hours (noon). Da Captain landed three shads by casting shad darts. Patriarch and JU got skunk.
They picked up and went to Freeport afterwards. They fished from thirteen hundred hours (1 PM) until sixteen hundred hours (4 PM) and landed twenty (20) shad!
At one point, the bite was so hot, that they had a quadruple hookup! Yes, quadruple because JU landed TWO fish simultaneously on the same line. That was awesome. JU thought he had a monster striped bass on. The drag from the ultra light pole screamed back and forth and JU had to tighten the drag to haul the fish in. Finally, when both fish were netted, they were both BIG hens. No wonder, JU thought it was a large striped bass.
Eleven hours for twenty-three (23) shad is not quite yet dialed in.... The team is still longing for a seventy-five (75) fish day! Maybe it's because JU misplaced his counter so there was no way to keep track of the number of fish caught is why the limit has not yet been achieved this year :-(
However, they feel exceptionally blessed; especially, the smile on the Patriarch's face says it all.
It was cold in the morning at Discovery Park
Twenty three shad total.
Check out this video of the Captain multitasking....
I went fishing on Friday, April 29th, with my brother and his brother-in-law. And yesterday, Sunday, May 1st, I went fishing with my brother and my dad. We targeted for American Shad, supposedly, President George Washington's favorite fish.
On Friday, we sat around for about three hours, from noon at high tide until 3:00 PM, without a bite. Then, from 3:00 PM until around 4:30 PM, the action was nonstop. We had double and triple hookups! We landed 17 fish total! I know it's not a lot as compared to others, but I am one happy camper. I was using light fishing gear, so each fish landed was a thrill! At one point, the Captain got a hookup and he started to fight the fish; after a few seconds, his drag screamed as the line went straight out and never stop! Eventually, the line broke off! We thought perhaps a big striped bass swallowed the shad and took off. We will never know....
Yesterday, we fished from 3 PM until 7 PM. However, only one fish was landed. I did hookup with a monster fish! You gotta see the video to believe it.
Until next time, may God bless your day!
TWO fish at the same time on one line!
The Captain landed the first fish (Friday, 4/29):
Sportive Fisherman with his $250.00 fishing rod & reel (Friday, 4/29)!
A triple hookups for the brothers (Friday, 4/29):
Maybe a big striper swallowed the shad; we never got to see this fish (Friday, 4/29):
Fish on for JU (Sunday, 5/1)!
Using light fishing pole, JU got to fight this monster fish for three minutes (Sunday, 5/1)!!!
