Literary accounts of fishouts in the recent past,
to make you sorry you didn't go.
Los Padres Fish Out April 24-25
By Tim Loomis
Los Padres Fish Out April 24-25
By Tim Loomis
Harry Petrakis and I left Santa Cruz around 4:30 Friday afternoon and picked up Elaine Cook on the way to Carmel Valley. Our campsite at the Saddle Mountain RV grounds included a quaint grassy area with a fire grill and picnic table. Turns out it was the site to be in. On Saturday morning (opening day of trout season) we were up at 5 AM. We met Richard Kline at about 7 AM in the reservoir parking lot. We were on the water by 8 AM and soon met Dave Jenson who joined the float tube flotilla. The weather was clear and warm, with the water temperature about the same as the ocean.
Right out of the chute Richard hooked what was to be "The Hog" of the weekend. Using a black wooly bugger with no action, just trolling, he landed a 20" to 23" fat brown trout that gave him a Nantucket sleigh ride around the north end of the reservoir for about 10 minutes. Elaine arrived at the scene in time to take some pictures of the beaming Richard and his beast. The rest of us settled for rainbows and steelhead dinks in the 6" to 12" range using buggers of all colors, nymphs and emergers. We got off the water around 4 pm. Harry and Elaine made another top notch dinner and we retired early in anticipation of rising an hour earlier.
We were on the water by 6:30 AM on Sunday morning and were blessed with another glorious day of weather. Fish were jumping all over the lake and we all assumed a better day of fishing was ahead, as we "had the place figured out". Wrong! We threw everything we had but could not match the catch of Saturday. Just as we were on the way out I put my T-14 line on for the 2nd time that day but with a rainbow minnow imitation instead of a bugger. Within 5 minutes this produced my largest pull of the weekend, only to loose it on an air strip. *Note to remember for the next time! We made it back to the campground, sat around noshing on leftovers and recounting what a good time we all had. Way to go Richard!