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LADIES DAY ON THE WATER

By: Ron Wilson

August 24, 2009.... I know I said no more kokanee fishing stories this year. Well I am sorry about that but this fishing outing was different and I would just be a deckhand.

It all started when Sierra Sportfishing Guide Bruce Hamby called me to see if I wanted to go up to New Melones Lake with him to find some kokanee. A lady in a wheel chair from Pleasanton had chartered him for a days fishing later in the week.

We launched the boat at New Melones at first light on August 12th and headed upriver to try our luck. We marked fish of some kind but they were not biting what we presented to them.

The kokanee are losing their scales, moving deep and starting their migration heading upriver to spawn at this time of year. We headed back to the spillway for a couple small fish that will not make the migration this year and then Bruce said to hell with this lake lets go fish Lake Don Pedro and see what we can find there.

We made it to Lake Don Pedro a little after 9 a.m. and by noon we had caught 4 kokes and one nice king salmon, a little over 4 pounds. We had found the fish and now all Bruce had to do was convince the ladies to meet us at Lake Don Pedro instead.

On Friday the 15th of August Bruce and I were ready at daylight, one seat out of the boat so the wheel chair would have more room, boat secured to the dock to make it easy to get aboard. The moon phase said the bite was on and here we were still at the dock. We would miss the main bite but Bruce was still confident that he could put his clients on fish and that he had them figured out.

The ladies arrived at the Blue Oak boat ramp a little after 6:30 a.m. They were just a few minutes late which was surprising to me as there was a fire on the Altamont Pass and in Ripon a big rig had flipped over blocking the south bound lanes, we were glad they were there when they were.

We got the ladies in the boat pretty easy, Bruce rolled Shelly down the ramp and onto the floating loading dock.  Bruce then got in the boat and reached over and picked up Shelly Luchini of Pleasanton and just sat her in the back seat of his boat and then we put her traveling wheel chair in the boat and she transferred over into it.
Bruce commented that Shelly was light as a feather and she commented back that she had told him over the phone that she didn’t weigh hardly anything. Maryann Fregard of Cool, California climbed in the boat and we were off.

Bruce was worrying about getting the jet boat on plane but when he looked over and saw that I had a good grip on the back of  Shelly’s wheelchair he gave the boat power and the boat climbed up on top of the water and we got underway.

It looked like Shelly was really enjoying the smooth ride as we headed up toward Hatch Creek where the fish had been located.

Once we arrived Bruce and I got the lines in the water and Bruce headed back into a nearby cove explaining that he thought the kokanee were feeding in the main channel in the back and then later in the day after they got done feeding were heading to deeper water. The lures were 80 to 100 feet deep on the wire and the poles were rigged with a orange fire tiger spinner, black spinner, a hoochie and a Kevorkian apex all with Pro Cure soaked shoe peg corn kernels on the hooks.

Shelly was excited as she positioned the wheel chair almost in the middle of the boat in the back so that she would be able to reel in the fish when they hit and also so that she could watch the depth finder up close and see what we were going over.

She was excited as she watched the fish marks on the depth finder and it wasn’t long before Shelly was reeling in her first kokanee, no monster but a nice little fighter.

I don’t know why, but the kokanee in Lake Don Pedro and also New Melones didn’t grow up as big as they usually do. The fish just stayed in the pound class and I never saw a 2 pound fish in either lake this year.

Next fish was on Maryann's side of the boat and she slowly reeled in the second fish of the day. Bruce had explained  how to reel in the fish and how soft the kokanee mouths are and the gals did a great job on the first two.

Bruce said I will gladly take ladies out fishing anytime because they usually pay attention to what you tell them to do when it comes to fishing.

I had to agree with him. Most guys that I take out know or think they know how to fish and after they go through the school of hard knocks and lose a half dozen fish or more they start to figure it out.

Shelly caught fish number 3 and Maryann caught fish number 4 and then it was Maryann, Maryann, Maryann. Shelley was ready to fire me as a deckhand as the rods on my side of the boat had pretty much quit producing fish for her.

Now she had 4 rods to look at as she was up until she had her limit of fish in the boat and it wasn’t long (10 a.m.) until she had her five fish in the box. Her limit fish came on a Kevorkian Apex at 141 feet deep on my side of the boat. I should have been working the rods more often on my side of the boat but I was just enjoying taking pictures and watching the ladies enjoy there fish to much.

I had a limit of fish to catch so we trolled around the area looking to pick more fish and hopefully find a nice big king salmon that we knew were in the area for the ladies to fight.

We had marked several that morning and on the pre fishing trip Bruce had caught one over 4 pounds there.
We circled the area for the next couple hours without finding a big fish for the gals to fight. With the ski boats going by constantly rocking us pretty good  Bruce decided to call it a day.

I had a ball watching the lady’s catch fish, taking pictures and playing deck hand. If the ladies had half as much fun as I did they will be back again next year and hopefully earlier as I would love to see them out on the water when the bite is on.

For more information about Bruce Hamby’s Sierra Sportfishing go to http://www.sierrasportfishing.com/