Lake Mead Largemouth

Went to Lake Mead last weekend. I heard the bass were up on beds, but I didn't find any. The water was very clear, so I didn't see alot of bass action, or milling around. But with the water that clear its hard to tell, because I could have been scaring them or else they were deep out of eye site. Either way I only caught one bass, the one in the photo. Caught it on a Rapala X-shad rap(light blue back). Tossed a few different lures this day, jigs, crank baits, scrounger head jigs and some jerk baits. The crank baits and jerk baits where the only thing I got any attention from the bass with. Water temp was 58 degrees, and air temps were around 70 but it was a bright blue bird day so fishing was tough.

Southern Nevada Pond Largemouth

Went to Floyd Lamb Park today. It was really windy and cloudy. It was hot out, so the clouds were a welcome, but the wind can go away! The wind was blowing so bad it was almost impossible to cast a fly rod. I have been hitting up the pond all winter experimenting with different fly patterns with no luck. I was not even really seeing any bass activity. But we have been having very warm days and warm nights this week, so I figured the bass would be active. I guessed right. Unfortunately there were so many people at the park it was impossible to fish it correctly, just all the activity made for poor fishing. But I did manage to get into one, and get a few other strikes. I was bouncing a green pumpkin jig with a green pumpkin trailer off the bottom and around stumps. I got a few strikes with this method. But I did notice a small bass chase my jig to the surface when I pulled it in. That gave me and idea to try and swim the jig around the shoreline. That was the ticket. After about the third cast swimming the jig I got bit and landed the bass in the picture, well I hooked it and let the little guy reel it in.

Went up to Cold Creek pond today. There was no snow at the pond itself, but plenty of snow on the mountain. In the picture, my son Kellen is playing in the snow. The pond's water level was full and really dirty. There were a few other people there fishing, but I didn't see any fish caught. I did see one fish rise. My kids threw a gold kast-master and I threw a couple different nymphs and an olive and a purple woolly worm, as well as the kast-master. But we didn't catch any fish this trip, not even any strikes, which is really strange for that place. Usually you can't make a cast without at least a small nibble. I think I might go to Lake Mead later in the week and try to catch one of the big stripers that are chasing the stocker trout around.

December Stripers

December was a pretty good month for stripers at Lake Mead. I got down to the lake about four times. I didn't really know how good the fishing would be, and my son wanted to go and is not really into going in the kayak in the dead of winter, so we bank fished. We did pretty good. Caught fish three out of the four trips. No more than 5 fish in any particular trip, but not bad for a few hours fishing. I got kinda lucky, I went down to Hemingway harbor where the hatchery trout are dumped in the lake. I was going to throw big trout swim baits in hope of getting a big striper. Once I got down to the lake there was like I expected, alot of people bank fishing. But to my amazement they weren't fishing for planter trout. They were all striper fishing. There were thousands of shad all balled up against the shore line. Most anglers where netting the shad and using them for bait. The stripers where not far behind the shad. I was using storm swim baits in shad color patterns. You had to be able to cast quite a ways out past the shad bait balls, but that was where the stripers where. On the first day I hooked three in a matter of 20 minutes, which wasn't bad considering that most of the other guys had been there all day using shad and hadn't got a bite. Here is a picture of my son Jared holding a striper he caught.

John Day River Smallmouth

My grandfather passed away a couple weeks ago. It was pretty sad, he taught me everything I know about fishing. I grew up fishing with him on the John Day River in eastern Oregon for smallmouth bass and steelhead. So after the funeral my brother, cousin and I went down to Clarno along the John Day River. It was kind of a tribute fishing trip, a chance for us three to get together and do something we all love in a place that is very special to all of us. The fishing was pretty good. Water levels were low because it was the end of summer. But we had no problem finding bass willing to bite. We used soft plastic worms, and switched off using one of grandpa's old fly rods. We caught about 50 bass between the three of us, unfortunately none of them were over 10 inches long. Oh well maybe next time, it was still a great day to be on the river.

Cave Lake Nevada,

Had a nice camping trip to Cave Lake in Northeastern Nevada at the end of July. Cave lake sits about 14 miles south of Ely Nevada at around 7,000ft elevation. The browns and rainbows where not very big, I think the biggest we caught was about 16 inches but there were plenty in the lake! My son and nephew slayed the trout one day with night crawlers. But mostly they used kastmasters and rooster tails and did fine, averaging about 6 trout every two hour period. I mostly fly fished, having success with olive crystal buggers. But in the evening when the hatch was on I used a lite Cay hill dry fly to clean up! It matched the hatch very well. My son even caught fish by using a dry fly on a spinning pole with a bobber. Most of the fish were around 6-8 inches. I think if I would have brought my kayak I could have found some larger fish. I also had some success trying a new lure and technique. I tried some mini jigs. I tried both small marabou jigs and well as the small plastic tube baits by themselves and with a bobber. Best method I found was a tube without the bobber. I caught two rainbows on the rig with only about 1 hour of hard fishing time. The strikes were pretty savage as well.

This is a picture of my son with a nice little papio (blue fin trevally) that he caught in K-Bay on the island of Oahu. The other picture is of my daughter Marissa's first ever bone fish she caught. Both fish were caught on squid.

In the middle of K-bay there is a huge sand bar. At low tide some of the sand bar is exposed, at high tide depth on the sand bar ranges from ankle deep to about three feet. So as you can imagine many fish come up on the sand bar to feed, especially bone fish. The edge of the sand bar drops off really fast into about 20-40ft of water, depending on the area.

When I fished by my self I would walk the sand bar using a fly rod or if the wind was bad I would use a small jig and a spinning rod to chase bone fish. But when the kids came I would just anchor on the edge, chum up the water with squid over the drop off and then still fish with squid for bait. We caught bone fish, trevally, small flounder and what ever else swam by. It was great fun and a good way to fish with the kids. Plenty of action to keep them interested.