The Vine Fri - 12/23

[LooseDrag]

Left the house a little late, got pulled over by the CHP for exceeding the speed limit, lucky that the wife used to work at Twin Towers Jail (DL# number blocked, so the guy only wrote me up for doing 80 so I could traffic school it away) got the ticket, and arrived at the lake around 5:45 to be 3 car just around the bend.

Got on the water around 6:20, tangled two of my rods so I had to re-tie, and off to the West shore Robert & I headed. Anchored up on a ‘spot’ and fished it for 1.5 catching 4 missing 2, and loosing a larger one that I hooked and it immediately fright trained right by the boat (looked to be 16-18” long) so I handed the rod to Robert as I was facing the wrong way and Robert did his best Banging Bob imitation ‘fighting the Lloyd’ before the line broke.

Pulled off the west shore to go check out another ‘spot’ where we ran into a friend who was also having an unusual tuff day at the Vine. NADA at this spot, so at 11:15 we hit the café for burgers and was back on the water around noon. Headed way back into the lake for a spot named after another friend to see if it was holding fish. Robert pulled two of our bigger fish off this spot and we were off the lake at 1:00pm.

Total of 6 fish on the stringer, two over 1.5#, other 4 around 1#, one larger model farmed and a few misses. Broke the pole on my portable fish finder so didn’t get to use it today. It was fairly tuff fishing on the main lake today. From what we saw, we did pretty good compared to others. Even my friend that we stopped and spoke with (twice) was only having a ‘fair day’, working very hard for his fish.

Lake should be full of fish if their stocking numbers are accurate. One of these days this lake has to go off, just wasn’t this day. I’ll be back on Sunday the 8th with a bunch of newbies on a pontoon boat for blended margaritas and burgers on the BBQ.

[Pickleboy]

right on gary starting to wonder about the pounds they claim they have stocked ,
is irvine up to the same old tricks they play every year ????

thanx for the report

donald & i almost went to the vine to join the rest but donald decided he wanted to tube for quality instead of catch numbers of smaller fish, decision made we headd for LNL

thanx again for the report

[billyg]

Hey Gary, You can use my name,just send a dollar for each specific usage.Anyway, as Gary stated the lake has been fishing tough. I fished until 1pm,quitting after I couldn't hook another fish in my last hour. No steady pattern, my 21 fish came on powerworms,crawlers,powerbait(yes, I resort to it when the trout are eating nothing else),and a single fish on the Thomas Bouyant.I caught the majority of my fish out of two spots I waited out patiently.A number of my go-to spots simply produced nothing!!! Felt truly fortunate to manage that many fish on this day. Heard way too many boaters and shoreline anglers stating they had caught one or two or even skunked. It was a beautiful day out and the lake was down another 3 or so feet. It seems to be down about that much more every week now. One successful angler was a beautiful red-tailed hawk that I watched pluck a decent trout from the middle of the lake. You'll never see that at SARL. Not because of the three freeways but because they WON'T EAT MT LASSEN SCUM TROUT! Most of the trout yesterday were 1 to 1.25lbs. Very small fish though they fought well for their size. My first fish came on the first cast of the morning with the powerworm. A 3.5lber exploded on my plastic just before it hit bottom.Then it skyrocketed out of the water and took off. AFter that fish,nothing over 1.5lbs. People are questioning the stockings but there are a massive amout of fish just sitting between 25 and 35 feet in the deeper parts of the lake. We metered them last weekend but they wouldnt eat the drifted crawlers,trolling lures,or jigs. One of these days they will come up in the water column and explode for the trollers.Those conditions simply havent come together yet. We metered very few fish in the top 15 feet of the water column. The biters have been hunkered tight to the bottom in 5 to 10 feet of water. Even the early morning splashers,both visible and audible,arent eating lures cast at them or flylined crawlers.WEIRD!!!!! Have a great holiday everyone. Good seeing you and Robert,Gary.My best to Sheila and Amy.

Bill

[South Bend]

Thanks for the report. If the swell doesn't lay down by Monday, I'll probably head out to Irvine.