Thursday we ventured south to a lake that I haven’t fished in years, Shifty and Parker had never fished it, Minersville. We were targeting Wipers for the day. We left the valley at 5 am and arrived at the lake around 7:30 am. We started fishing right off the ramp, trolling for the rainbow in the morning waiting for the water temp. to rise.
We were studying the layout of the reservoir to see what it had to offer for cover and structure to see where we wanted to target our efforts later in the morning and day. We were trolling lures; this lake is an artificial lake only with a very tight restriction on kept fish. Only one trout over 22 inches can be kept. The lake harbors large trout, rainbow, brown and occasionally a brook but it was the wipers we were looking forward to catching and the smallmouth bass that are found there as well.
We fished through the morning and as the temp. rose we started getting closer to the dam so we could fish for the wipers and smallmouth bass. That morning we (Shifty and Parker) did catch a few trout, two very nice ones that QR’d at boat side. Parker landed a very nice rainbow and shifty put two on the boat as well. Me not so much.
We came to the dam and the area we felt the wipers and smallmouth would be held up and started pitching lures at the structure. The lake itself was a flat bottom lake with some sagebrush structure found along the shores. It was very shallow due to the release of irrigation water, but it was on the rise since they had shut down irrigation for the year, still at its deepest we only found 18 feet of water. The water was very stained with algae and needs to turn over to clean itself.
We threw everything we had at the structure around the dam, lipless, crankbaits, swim jigs, drop shots all different color schemes, sizes, shapes but to no avail. We were not getting anything even following us. We fished it hard for a couple hours back forth changing angles of retrieval, speed and action of retrieval again nothing! Parker not being a fan of the bass was fishing the lake side of the drift and looking for trout. No one got anything along the dam. After a couple hours we decided to move to the shallow end of the lake where we caught the trout and fished the structure along the banks in the shallows, still no chasers.
We finished the day on troll looking for more trout and me my first fish! We changed speeds and cruised the area at around 2 – 2.5 mph, trolling lures and hooked a couple more very nice rainbow trout. Me, not so much! Finally, I changed over to the lure that was producing, a Jake’s super-duper, and got a hit after a few minutes, only to have it QR at the boat!!! I had at the time, caught a tree, (literally a tree), a sock, a rag, and what we think was thong underwear! No fish yet! Frustrated, tired and hungry I started toward the ramp, the wind was up and the boat was struggling to keep the speed we wanted so I was done. Half way to the ramp I got another hit it was a nice pole bending strike and I set the hook hard, like I was swinging for the fence! This one was not getting off!
Reeling it in was fun, a good tug of war. I would gain a few feet it would drag a couple back. We landed the fish and it was a nice rainbow trout. Shifty also caught one and that was our first and only double up for the day. Shifty released his quickly. We got a couple pics of mine and called it good. Loaded up and went to Beaver and ate at Mel’s Café on main street a good place to stop.
On the way home we made a detour to see how Yuba was looking. Shifty couldn’t handle it and had to throw some hardware at the pike. We had fish jumping all around us that looked like perch and trout. We got nothing and loaded up for home. Yuba by the way is extremely low!! Fun, full day of fishing but still no Wipers. Until next time #keepitbent!
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