Last friday the wife "surprised" me with a suggestion that we go to one of my favorite fishing lakes.
Of course I said YES!
Now, this lake, at one time, was a trophy trout lake, well known for large fish, ranging from 3-4 lbs and many fish exceeding 10-15 lbs and more. At one time F&G "shocked" sections of the lake and brought up trout in the 30 -40 lbs range.
The reason for their large size is the incredible pond smelt population in the lake and the powerhouse that feeds into the lake. When the powerhouse is running, the smelt that get sucked into the penstock (pipe that feeds the powerhouse) and are stunned/killed as they go through. They end up floating on the surface of the water below the powerhouse in the thousands, which the trout greedily suck up off the surface of the outlet (it looks like a small river).
In 1996 PG&E had to tear down the dam on this lake and rebuild it to new earthquake standards.
Unfortuately, this nearly wiped out the fish in the lake.
They had the dam done in late 1997, and now, 12 years later the lake has finally come back.
Here are some fish from the first night:
I'm looking a little rough, I'd been up since 5:30 am the day before when the wife surprised me (she called me at 1:30 in the afternoon), and I'd fished until midnight or so (you can fish 24/7 in this county) and haden't slept very well.
The next night I got skunked, but had missed some truly large fish (10 lbs +), probably double the size of the ones pictured, both ran about 5 lbs or so.
I'm thinking we may head back next weekend.
