Big Bear "Snow Trolling" Friday April 2nd, 2004
I woke up at 0300 after a refreshing two and a half hours of sleep and headed up to Big Bear with chains, a full tank of gas and an even fuller thermos of coffee. It was sprinkling off and on until I got up on the mountain, where it began to rain and then to snow. In the chilly darkness I had to wonder about my plan, but the fantastic fishing I had experienced last weekend kept me pressing onward.
It took me exactly 90 minutes to cover the 94 miles from my house to my launch site along the north shore of the lake, and it was 0500 and just getting light in the east. I quickly began rigging my Kayak as the foot wells filled with snow.
I was determined to stay warm and dry, so I wore three pairs of socks, long thermal underwear from head to toe, jeans and then heavy sweat pants over the jeans, a T-shirt and a long sleeve flannel shirt and a super-heavy hooded sweater. I then donned my chest high dry-breathable waders with 3mil neoprene booties, put aqua-shoes over the booties and last but not least pulled over my gore-tex paddle-top, sealed at the waist, wrists and neck. Oh and put on my Shimano neoprene gloves and a ski mask. Ahhh.
By the time I launched it was nearly 05:30, but I figured it was better to get it right the first time rather than fight hypothermia the rest of the day. Just like last Sunday I immediately started getting bit trolling the CD-3 and CD-5 Rapalas in silver-black. One thing different this time was I was marking fish like crazy in spots, and trolling and turning and especially stroke-trolling those spots was getting me hooked up pronto!
I tried various other colors, sizes and lures, including kastmasters and Thomas buoyants, but the same cd-3 and cd-5 were getting all of the love from the trout. I was using two pound test, with straight maxima on one rod and pure fluorocarbon leader on another and it didn't seem to matter a bit. I ended up with 12 or 13 trout, keeping five between 16 and 19 inches. I couldn't find my digital scale, so no weights today, sorry.
Here is a typical trout I was catching, a bit over 16 inches. The smaller ones were a nuisance again, but I managed to get a limit of "16 and over" fish before 9am. I had boated five within the first 45 minutes.
There were a few of the hard-core fishing the shore. In this picture you can see the guy in the blue parka, 2nd from the right, has his arms up. He was bendo on a nice trout. Every time I see a shore fisher at Big Bear they are either bendo or walking around with a nice stringer, it seems.
About 7am a few guys showed up and launched tin boats to fish the trout, they trolled mostly in the middle of the lake, eventually there were three other boats out there besides me. Two of them left after a short time! I don't think they had brought the "right stuff" to hang out there in the squalls of snow and freezing rain that were repeatedly blowing through. It would get sorta calm for a few minutes and then you could see the swirling white coming across the lake and it would hit with driving snow and rain, and sloppy waves as well.
I loved every minute of it, and only left when I couldn't feel my feet anymore! Plus my battery was getting low on the trolling motor, I had forgotten the deleterious effect that near-freezing temperatures have on batteries. I was very satisfied anyway, with another load of these beautiful, incredibly hard-fighting pink-meat beauties on board. I love the ocean, and have been fishing it like this since I was a teen, but my dad loved the mountains and the trees and the trout, and I have been doing that since I was four, and I have to say I like it even better. The weather makes the whole experience just that much more intense. I had a day to remember.
Thanks for reading this, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed living and writing it.
John Roe, the Quietman
Solo fight video, kinda hard to do Not slow trolling, Snow trolling
Click the pictures to make them big, after they load.
