The popular notion that on Tahoe many long, fishless hours must be endured between bites makes people feel better about their lack of success, but also encourages a passive attitude where new techniques and areas are not explored as anglers wait for the next bite. I discovered that the time spent waiting was more wisely used in experimentation, and as a result my catch rate steadily increased. I still put in long hours on the water, but now I can reasonably expect that at some point on each trip, I'll be rewarded for my effort, usually by a rainbow or mackinaw. I also manage to catch a few good Tahoe browns each year, though I may go months at a time without seeing one. Normally I hook a couple in the fall, then none all winter, then enjoy the best brown-trout fishing of the year in early spring, when they suddenly appear in the same rocky shallows that had been producing the other species. This still means one brown per trip if I'm lucky, but it's more action than most guys see, so I'm happy to wait for the spring bite and grateful that I'm able to 'pattern' the fish at all. Just when I think I know what to expect though, Tahoe brown trout surprise me. This year they're early.

Charter captains who offer trips for rainbows and browns here generally do so in spring and fall, when fish are active and willing to chase fast moving lures near the shoreline. Some are caught in summer as well, but heavy boat traffic tends to put them down, and huge kokanee salmon schools gather at that time, providing an easier target for a guide who wants to make a boat full of anglers happy. Kokanee suspend fairly deep and are not shy- unless a client specifically requests a shallow-water adventure, the captain will choose to put twenty small salmon in the boat rather than look for one or two big trout. Winter is not known as highly productive for brown trout either. As the lake's surface temperature drops to near 40 degrees, they become sluggish and unwilling to chase a minnow plug zipping past at four miles-per-hour. Even slow moving presentations are often fruitless for rainbows and browns until early spring has warmed the water a bit. Mackinaw help fill in this slow period; these fish are adapted to colder water than the other species, and when temperatures in the shallows drop to within their preferred comfort range, they roam these areas freely, providing great sport on light tackle. That's what keeps me topline trolling all winter, waiting for the brown trout to bite.

Well, the wait is over! At first I thought it was just a fluke when my friend Jeff Keyser caught one January third on a trip I took with him aboard his canoe. He was slow-trolling a Flatfish plug along the Nevada shoreline when his rod bent over hard then stayed down. Mackinaw hit like this, and that's what we expected until his fish ran right toward and then beneath the canoe. "Nice brown!" I told him, and although we expected it to spook at the sight of the boat, it just sat there, finning slowly, suspended several feet down. I scooped it up in the net and it suddenly came to life in a violent struggle that would have been most impressive had it still been in the lake. It was barely hooked on the tip of its snout, and we reasoned that the cold water had made it slow to bite and even slower to fight. We were lucky to have caught it at all, Jeff said, and then the fish had a lucky day when I took a few quick photographs and my buddy released it..

The following week I was back out, this time in an 18 foot Smokercraft fishing boat on the lake's California side. I was conducting an on-the-water seminar for Fishsniffer reader Mick Thomas aboard his vessel, and though I figured another January brown was a long shot I chose to fish an area known to produce them, the very stretch where my wise, old mentor had first introduced me to these fish. Mick steered his boat as I coached him on how to watch his sonar unit and follow a specific depth contour, but our only bites came from mackinaw. One of the macks went five pounds and my client was happy, but despite trying several different techniques and lures, we failed to hook any browns. I resigned myself to wait for the longer, warmer days of spring to put my favorite fish into a feeding mood.

Then on January 19, I launched the canoe at dawn from Cave Rock boat ramp for another day of shallow water mackinaw fishing, and all my theories and rationalizations went overboard when I caught a limit of brown trout. For over two hours I trolled without a bite, covering several miles of shoreline, then at 9:00 a.m. in sunny, calm conditions, I hooked up. As I grabbed my rod from the holder, an eighteen-inch brown flung itself into the air. This trout was not sluggish at all, putting up a great fight for its size. Once it tired I drew it alongside the canoe and reached down with my pliers to twist the Gamakatsu baitholder hook out of its jaw. It splashed me then slowly swam down and out of sight. I'd better not tell Martha, I thought. My lovely wife considers the succulent, pink-orange meat of Tahoe brown trout to be better than that from any other fish, and she scolds me whenever I release one. So when I retrolled the same rockpile from the other direction and had another slam on the same flashers-and-nightcrawler rig that took the first fish, I knew that if I wanted to be able to tell the story about catching two browns from the same spot, I had to bring one home. As I put the fish on my stringer then set up for another trolling run, I thought about the unusual scenario. Normally, big browns on Tahoe are loners and you catch only one from any one area, but here were two hooked off the edge of the same submerged boulder. I decided to keep fishing my productive rockpile, and was rewarded yet again when I caught a third brown trout then a fourth on a dodger-and-minnow combination. Each fish leaped, fought hard, and each was bigger than the last, until at 11:45 a.m. I hooked my fifth and final trout, a 24 inch male that cleared the water four times, dragging my Seps Pro dodger into the air with it. I took two of these fish home, gently releasing the other three. That night my wife gave me a footrub, and she never gives me footrubs.

I could hardly believe my good fortune, and when I headed out again to the same area on January 28, I figured I'd used up all my brown trout luck for the season. Not quite, it turned out, as my friend Danger Shoreward and I had another great day catching big Tahoe browns! As we traveled toward the spot where I caught my fish the previous week, I picked up a four-pound mackinaw while trolling a rainbow trout pattern Bomber lure. Danger then hooked another decent mack on a Rapala Jointed plug, but when we reached my honey-hole rockpile, we quickly switched to flashers and dodgers. Passing over the boulders several times without result, at the end of one run I circled out into deeper water and a good fish struck Danger's nightcrawler. A twenty-one inch brown, I managed to talk him into releasing it, but when he hooked a nearly identical fish a few minutes later I knew that one would be going home. My minnow and dodger failed to draw a strike, and by late morning we were heading back to Cave Rock, stopping to spot-fish other productive areas on the way.

We hit several such zones without catching anything, but in the final minute of the last trolling run, at one in the afternoon on another calm, cloudless day, my rod went down hard. Whoa! Danger reeled in quickly when I told him that the fish felt big and I might need to turn around to follow it. It peeled line rapidly off my reel against the lightly set drag then launched clear of the water like toast popping up, 100 yards back. "Whoa is right," said Danger- "yeah, you'd better follow it, because it's a pig and its going to go around that buoy and break off. That thing must be eight pounds." I circled toward the fish, yet further from shore, moving my motor's tiller with my elbow to steer so I could reel in and keep the line tight as I closed the gap. Moving out into the lake until I was over a sand bottom, I slowly worked the trout out of the rocks. A man standing on the dock of a house on shore called his family out to watch, and this impromptu audience cheered me on as I struggled for several minutes to bring the fish up from the lake bed, where I could see it clearly, thirty feet down, rolling and rubbing furiously, kicking up clouds of sand as it tried to dislodge the hook. When I finally brought it up, it leapt again right at the boat, then Danger was able to net it. I was literally shaking, quivering with adrenaline as I looked at the thick, yellow flank of the huge trout. If my friend was right, this would be my biggest Tahoe brown ever. When we passed in front of the shore anglers casting out from Cave Rock parking lot on our way back to the boat ramp, he held up our fish for them to see, and by the time we reached the ramp they were all gathered there, waiting to see our catch up close. One of them had a cheap Zebco scale, and I borrowed it to find that it registered the trout as weighing only five pounds. I knew it was bigger than that, so I took it to the butcher at the Safeway supermarket and made him put it on his certified digital scale, where it came up seven-and-a-half. Even there, between the lamb chops and the ground beef, I soon had several locals around me, peppering me with questions.

"Did you get it on a Rapala?"

"Dodger? What size?"

"And you caught it in the middle of the day?" This is the kind of interest and awe sparked by Tahoe brown trout, and for those readers sparked by my tale, here are a few tips for pursuing them:

As spring approaches and the water warms, fast-trolled plugs will again become productive for browns. Try Rapala, Rebel or Bomber plugs on a long line, up to 150 yards of six or eight pound test. For slow-troll action right now, try a Flatfish plug, or use small flashers or dodgers trailing live minnows or nightcrawlers. Pull these offerings tight to rocky structure; if you don't occasionally hang up or lose a lure, you're not tight enough. Use light main line and even lighter leaders, especially on calm, sunny days. My leader is six-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon, which has the diameter of four-pound monofilament line.

Keep as quiet as possible; the canoe is probably my most important piece of fishing equipment because its shadow as it passes over fish is a mere sliver compared to the average fishing boat, and my Minn Kota electric motor is nearly silent, leaving barely a ripple in my wake. If you're not catching fish, try letting out more line, to further distance your bait from the disturbance of your boat. Consider using your electric motor if you have one, or take a tip from Tahoe charter captains by using outriggers or sideplaners to keep your boat's shadow and wake away from the path over which your lure will pass. Knowledge of the structure and layout of the lake is essential for success, and this is where the old 'put in your time' adage has value. If you expect a big brown trout the first time you find a fishy-looking spot, you'll probably be disappointed. Fortunately, Tahoe mackinaw and rainbow trout respond to the same presentations in the same areas, so if you're catching these species, keep at it because you're on the right track.

I must also admit that I had one extra, tiny bit of terminal tackle that may have helped me catch my big fish. I was recently given an "E-chip" to field test by Brad Stout, pro-staffer for Pro-Troll, the company that produces Scotty downriggers. The E-chip is a tiny metal cylinder that, when tilted or shaken, emits a small electrical impulse purported to mimic the current produced by a distressed baitfish. I know, it sounds a little farfetched, but Brad is an accomplished trophy trout angler, and he's been conducting studies with these chips over the past year by attaching them to his Rapala and Flatfish lures. Trolling Northern California and Nevada lakes for mackinaw, brown trout and Lahontan cutthroat trout, he has documented an increase of over 30 % in catch rate using lures with E-chips attached versus the same lures trolled without the chips.

One peek into my tackle box will tell you that I like to collect all the new lures and gadgets, so when Brad offered me some E-chips I gladly accepted and glued one onto my favorite dodger. In my first, completely unscientific field test, I ran the electrified dodger all morning without a bite, but then it caught me the big fish of the day. Maybe I would have caught it anyway, but this definitely calls for more research! The chips are not available for sale yet; look for them this spring at www.pro-troll.com.

Fish Facts- Tahoe Brown Trout: Salmo Trutta is a non-native species, introduced from Europe to North America in 1883. Fish from streams in Germany were the first arrivals, followed by brown trout from Scottish Lakes. Hatcheries and fish culturing technologies were well established in the United States at that time, and progeny of the original stocks were soon sent by rail across the country. The exact date of their arrival in Tahoe is unclear, but the spotty records indicate that they were first stocked here over 100 years ago and quickly formed a self-sustaining, wild population. Some claim that both the silvery, lake dwelling 'Loch Leven' strain from Scotland and the heavily spotted trout from Germany were stocked here- that may be true, but the majority of brown trout caught in Tahoe exhibit the color pattern of typical river fish, and they are referred to locally as 'German Browns'. They spawn in the lake's tiny tributary streams each fall and maintain a strong population throughout the lake without any regular stocking program. A recent exception was a plant of over 20,000 Sheep's Creek strain fingerlings at Cave Rock in 2001. These tiny fish will grow up slowly in Tahoe's clear, nutrient-poor waters, and it will be a few years before they show up in anglers' catches.

Due both to the fact that so few browns are caught and that those who catch them don't talk about it, the lake record brown trout is also hard to determine. I've heard that an eighteen-pounder was caught some years ago, and I personally know two anglers who have Tahoe browns over ten pounds to their credit. Such catches are rare, but this is a gambling town baby! Go for the long shot!

Until next time,
Mark (The Trout Whisperer) Wiza
Email Me!

More Articles & Reports by Mark Wiza