After eight productive trips to Hogan I suppose it was time for a
skunk, although the fish tried to do their part.

The short story: I had three good strikes that stuck long enough for
me to begin working the fish to the boat. Every single one came undone
within seconds. That is very frustrating – especially when I was using
the exact same rigs I had used the last two weeks and reeled in five
stripers. And I don’t remember a single fish coming unbuttoned the
past two weeks. I’ll blame it on the unusually heavy amount of bait in
the water; perhaps the fish were not striking to feed, but were
hitting so lightly that the hooks just didn’t stick deeply.

Incidentally, the hooks are barbless on my new Pro-Troll rigs. I
changed them to barbed hooks after this trip and I hope that will
correct this problem.

I’ve never seen more bait balls than I did this trip. They were
everywhere it seemed, and when I did find the stripers they were just
inside the mouth of the river arm feeding on the abundant bait – which
I believe are shad. I marked the bait everywhere I went. And there was
a 3/4 moon this trip as well, so the stripers had been very well fed
during the night and not exactly on the prowl for the anchovies I
offered.

A seaplane entertained me during the early morning. It was a beautiful
twin-engine plane with massive floats. He practiced landings and
takeoffs a few times, and then was gone. A photo of that beautiful
plane is on my website.

Later, a couple Calaveras County Sheriff deputies launched their boat
to retrieve a rather nice looking cabin cruiser that apparently had
been abandoned at the shoreline inside the upriver arm. I don’t know
the story of that boat, but the sheriff had a flatbed trailer along,
and I believe they somehow loaded it onto the trailer and soon after
they were gone. I didn’t see them when they left. That was a strange
incident.

Maybe next week I can land some stripers... I hope the barbed hooks
will do the trick!

Photos on my homepage - including the ramp situation: http://www.fishwisher..com

Dale

www.fishwisher.com