For the second time in the past 20 years I went fishing at Irvine lake, and I must say I just might make a habit of going more often. It is so nice to just drive 20 minutes from my house and toss my kayak into the sweet, still waters of a lake, and then to have pretty much non-stop action on hard-fighting tasty critters surrounded by beautiful, quiet, peaceful countryside and big puffy clouds, well you know I'm going to do it again!
I didn't want to screw around with lines and dark and lost sleep and all that silliness, so I got up at 6am and moseyed on down to the lake, arriving in full-light. After shelling out my $22.00 for a fishing and kayak pass, I assembled my kayak and headed out from the old, silted-up boat launch by the campground.
I was trolling rapala cd-5's and ft-5's in firetiger, and dragging thomas bouyant spoons in gold and chartruese and later a kastmaster in gold. All produced. My biggest, a 6 1/2 pounder, came on the rapala, but the next two largest came on the TB.
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This was my biggest, at 6 1/2 pounds, and boy does he make the rapala cd-5 look tiny!
I eventually caught over twenty, all lip hooked and (of course) only the 5 biggest kept, for a total weight of just under 20 pounds on the stringer. Some were really, really fun fighters, since all my rigs were 4 pound or 6 pound ultra-light spinning sets, and I had plenty of scope out.
I had the first limit caught by 9:30 and it really got going around 10:30, I was pretty much done by noon.
I met two other yakkers, Bobby and ??? and they were pretty much doing the same thing with the same results, except that Bobby's friend topped his stringer with a 10 pounder, which I didn't get a picture of, but here is a picture of Bobby with a decent sized trout...
And the both of them, trolling...
Great day on the water, met some great people, pretty place to fish, and perfect way to get my kayak wet in freshwater for the first time...
quietman