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His first trout was a
beauty
May 23, 2002
By RON WILSON
Luis Chan reeled and reeled
as he fought the first trout he had ever tried to catch. When he finally
got the fish to the boat, it was a beauty, in the 5-pound class. Luis
sat down and exclaimed, "Boy, that's a lot of reeling!"
That was the first fish of
the trip to be boated. The fish hit a blue-pink Ex-Cel Lure that I had
put on a wire snap with 50 yards of monofilament line tied on to
leadcore line. We were six colors behind the boat.
Our week of fishing at Lake
Camanche had started out with a bang. By 3 p.m., Luis, Dr. Quen Young
(both Luis and Quen are from San Francisco) and I had our limit of 15
fish. Not bad, as we hadn't started fishing until after 9:30 a.m. Our
five-fish limits ranged from 7 to a little over 11 pounds, a great start
to our week's vacation at the lake.
The $2.50 fishing permits to
help restock the lake seem to be working as there are bigger trout on
the average here than at any lake I have fished this year.
We cleaned our fish and
headed to our nearby rooms to relax where we enjoyed a cool blended
fruit drink that I make. Our rooms were spacious, to say the least, with
a king size bed and two queen size beds, TV in every room and more
cabinet space in the kitchen and bathrooms than I have in my home.
After a quick shower, a
steak dinner was on the table by 5 p.m. I could see that this team was
going to have a real relaxing week as everyone was pitching in and doing
their part to make it easy on each other.
On Wednesday, Norval
Pimentel came up with his Stratos bass boat for us to use while he
delivered his Thermo Oil Packed batteries in the High Sierra. Luis had
never been in a bass boat so I treated him to a 70 mph ride.
We spent the day black
bass fishing. Fishing was slow but Luis did have a big one on, until the
hook pulled free. Norval returned after finishing his deliveries and
joined us for the rest of the day. We put a few little fish in the boat
and then quit fishing at 5:30 p.m. Then it was back to the room for
another great steak dinner.
Thursday Luis, Quen and
myself hit the water at 7 a.m. to chase the trout again. The fish were
on the bite and we boated a couple of nice ones. Quen lost a nice one at
the boat, Luis lost one, then Quen another. Then I lost one followed by
Quen again. But by noon we still limited out again.
The fish were in the 30- to
40-feet deep area Thursday and the Vance's gold and silver ball trolls
were drawing them in. We used blue/gold, blue/silver and blue/pink
Ex-Cels to catch the fish. I never use a split ring on the lures as I
feel it can alter the action of the lure. I like just a plain wire snap
tied to my main line so that I can change lures easily.
With 30 nice trout in the
freezer, we slept in Friday and packed up and came home early, ending a
very relaxing week.
Lake Camanche is the only
lake in our area that I know of where you can get up and have the boat
in the water in a matter of minutes. Both North Shore and South Shore
have accommodations. The wildlife at Lake Camanche is abundant. Every
morning I would get up early to listen to the wild turkeys gobbling
before they left the roost. Hen turkeys came to visit daily as they fed
through the area near where we stayed. Canadian geese, ducks and deer
also were plentiful to view. For more information call (North Shore)
763-5121 or (South Shore ) 763-5178.
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