Plumas County, California

What an interesting week! I returned home this evening from a week long snipe hunt on Browns. Lake Almanor to be exact. The lake is in the North Eastern part of California for anyone who's wondering. I usually head up for a week around the first of October and concentrate on Browns but the Smallmouth and big Bows can not be over looked. There is also tons of stream fishing to break it up if the lake fishing gets tough. I really like the area for the diversity it offers and the consistantly good year over fishing. This year was a little off. I can blame it on the moon but there were many factors including un seasonable warm weather and the list goes on and on. The bottom line is that I didn't get em and someone always does. So it is what it is and I cant wait to get back up there. Maybe in November for a short trip.

fixer upper

Lassen Nat Park

I was here when not on the lake

Every hole was stacked with these little scrubs!

mean bastards!!!

 

Long story short, I never stuck a trout in the lake the whole damn week. I tried everything I could think of. I did have three browns follow streamers, clousers to be exact, to the surface, but they just weren't excited at all. Normally they are chasing Pond Smelt and I can expect two or three quality bites from BRowns over a course of the week and lots of nice Rainbows and Smallies to fill in the blanks and keep it interesting. Bait was from the surface to 40 and  I was marking fish deep so I finally settled into to casting type 6 sinking and even T14 heads and dredging  bait fish patterns in 25-30'. What I was marking and ended up getting bit from were really nice Smallmouth. They would follow and wack it about 10ft below the surface. Water was 10-15ft vis so getting all the way down to the fish wasn't really all that important. Fish in 35 could pick up a fly in 20'!. The average was around 3lbs and over the course of the day I would catch 8-10 smallies.  Really HARD fighting healthy fish. No dinks but no giants either. Thats great smallie fishing for quality fish, lots of fun and certainly nothing to be ashamed of but I really wanted those friggin Browns that usually show.  The up side was the the small stream fishing was fantastic for small Bows and October caddis were coming off every afternoon causing them to go ape shit. It was perfect 3wt type fishing,  rock hopping through the woods with no humans to be seen once I bush wacked in. Just crazy ass logging truck drivers to watch out for going in and out. All in all a great week and it was good to get away with my wife for some chill time.

Morning Smallie

Beautiful evenings! looking south down the shoreline

And looking north from the same spot

Pond Smelt

Burned about 35 gallons @ 4.55 per gallon. F*&^!

A little Feather River smallie caught just below the falls

Power Plant going strong!

taken on top with a floating Pond Smelt fly below the power  plant