March 10, 2018

We experienced a good old-fashioned winter in February ten plus feet of snow, single digit colds, the warmest recorded temp for the entire month was a balmy 44 degrees. Removing snow has been tops on Plumas County resident’s priority list.

This past Thursday and Friday, Mike Daly, Mike Stebbins, Robert Gonzalez and I had an opportunity to knock the rust off our fishing gear and spend some time on the water. We experienced rain, snow, hail, sun, wind and ice. We also managed to catch a few fish over the two days. We marked lots of fish, just had a hard time enticing them to bite in the 37-degree water. We managed to bring eleven fish to the boat over the two days. There were long stretches of us enjoying our time on the water without interruption.

Each morning we picked up a single fish trolling Artic Fox flies in front of the dam, those fish were caught trolling at 1.8 mph on the pond smelt pattern 10 feet deep. We trolled along the East shore from the dam to Dorado without a grab, hit Hamilton Branch to Big Cove same results, Rec #2 to the ice (which was south of Bayley on Thursday) for nothing, picked up headed to Almanor West where we picked up five fish fast trolling hardware. Red and gold was our top producer at 2.8 MPH in 20 to 30 feet of water fishing in the top 15 feet. All the fish we caught were Rainbows with all but a couple over three pounds and two fatties topping five. 

Our winter is far from over and the fishing will only get better as the water warms, the roads are in great shape and the Canyon Dam boat ramp is open. The overflow parking lot is still buried in snow and will be for a while so parking could be an issue when pressure picks up.

John