Mariko and I went fishing with Bruce Hamby, owner of Sierra Sportfishing Guide Service, sierrasportfishing/ at New Melones Lake prior to the 2014 OWAC meeting. With more than 40 years of experience, Bruce did an excellent job of putting us onto fish, and he also was willing to fish for as long as we wanted. In fact, by the time we decided to call it a day, there were only a few other boats remaining on the lake. Two things that impressed us were the abundance of kokanee salmon, and the strikingly low-water conditions. Bruce mentioned that the lake was no more than 40% of capacity due to the prolonged drought, slightly higher than many other lakes in the region. Two fish species we likewise had targeted, rainbow and brown trout, eluded us. Brown trout exceeding 15 pounds have been caught in New Melones Lake. We managed to catch a fair number of kokanee that day, but kept just enough for several meals. Each angler is allowed to keep five salmon per day if so inclined. The biggest challenge was not hooking them, but reeling them in because they get off the hook so easily. We did reasonably well – we managed to boat two-thirds of the hooked fish, and released about one-half of them. The kokanee salmon is a landlocked version of the much larger anadromous sockeye salmon. We were unaware beforehand that they represent the same species. The fish we landed were uniform in size, none of them larger than 13 inches in length, but their tastefulness makes up for their diminutive size...Robert S. Lane
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 18:05:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015