And you are not. That's why you're reading this article, you poor people stuck in winter, with your favorite fishing opportunities still months away. Clearly, you're bored, and I'd like to thank all of you for bothering me with emails. I actually received the most when I took a few weeks off from writing for fishsniffer.com recently. That shows me just how badly cabin fever has set in among the region's trout fishing addicts. Jim "The Vicarious Fisherman" Souza wrote-

"Mark, it's been too long since your last Tahoe report. Is the Mrs. having you remodel the house?"

Other readers kept me and themselves entertained by writing informative letters. This one came from Cody, a.k.a. Trouttracker, in February, in response to an article where I asked for readers' input on a strange kokanee I caught in Fallen Leaf Lake.

"While reading your Tahoe Area report from Oct 27, 2000 (yeah I know a little late, but not much to do today with all the rain) I read about the kokanee you caught. From what I've read about your fish I would say that one of two things occurred. Either the fish had spawned on a gravel bar and you caught it in the act of dropping the eggs or that the fish was staging in the lake getting ready to spawn. They often do this at Stampede and you can see their bright red and green colors and the hens with their fat bellies full of eggs. They do try to spawn on gravel bars and I have accidentally caught them while trout fishing in the fall around inlets, some have spawned out but they were all very close to ideal spawning habitat. I've even seen dead spawned out fish floating miles from any rivers that just got washed down the stream and blown around the lake. I would have to say that it was just a staging fish. As to the bait that it was caught on, Phil Johnson of Kokanee Power claims it is the action and color that makes them strike. I enjoy reading your reports."

Thanks again to all of you for your thoughts. I cannot seem to keep up with answering each email (I haven't even called my mom in New Hampshire for over a month), but they are appreciated. Enough about me though. It's time for some fishing porn. Lurid descriptions and graphic pictures to get all you vicarious fishermen through the end of winter. Just don't get caught looking at this on the computer at work. Join me now, through the miracle of the World Wide Web, as we relive my last few attempts to put my foolish ass in a canoe on Tahoe in winter. Every other outdoor sport these days has gone "extreme, dude", so why not fishing?

Let's kick it off with what has become a regular feature here at Wiza's Sierra Report, a segment I like to call "Mystery Fish". Today's contestant hails from the Cave Rock area of Lake Tahoe. Nineteen inches long maybe two and a half pounds, she is seen here accompanied by an elegant, four pound mackinaw. Both fish had the good taste to bite a minnow I trolled behind a Sep's Sidekick dodger. Our mystery fish fought hard, leaped once, and was nearly all BLACK. I could just make out a faint rainbow trout pattern on its flank, so the question here is not what species of fish this is, but why a rainbow would be black. Now, I don't mean to sound prejudiced; I was raised in an integrated community, and love all the peoples of the world, but these are fish, and what's with a BLACK RAINBOW? Kind of defeats the purpose of being a rainbow trout. Any readers with stories of such dark trout (or albino, but not plaid or pinstripe) please email and amuse me.

2/22/01
"Snow showers. No significant accumulation. Light northwest winds." I said this to my friend Brad, cupping my hands around my mouth and shouting to be heard over the howling gusts and four foot whitecaps rolling and breaking on the rocks.

Standing at the edge of the Cave Rock parking lot, facing Lake Tahoe, we were watching an impressive display of nature's fury. Curtains of wet, clinging snow swept down diagonally on each surge of wind. The crashing waves shot spray high into the air, and the wind drove it like freezing rain upon us.

We had planned to fish in my canoe, which seemed at that point about as realistic as the local report on weather.com. Now, I know those meteorologists are highly skilled professionals, and I've touted the Weather Channel and its website as accurate tools for planning a fishing trip in my own articles, but lately, every call they make is wrong.

Northern California is in an unpredictable late winter storm track, with a new low pressure system rolling through the Tahoe Basin every few days. Most snowstorms bring a good deal of wind upon arrival, scrubbing my canoe plans, but I always watch for "the window", a period of calm as the cold front settles in, or at times as it moves out. Such days, overcast with glassy water and perhaps even rain or snow, can produce outstanding fishing, if you can stand the weather.

The gusts were so strong that when I didn't plant my feet correctly, I was actually pushed off balance. When we left my house on south shore, the water off El Dorado Beach was barely rippled. At Cave Rock, I had the hood of my waterproof parka tightened down to a mere peephole for my eyes, and we were pointing out individual impressively large waves- "surfables". We tried shorefishing, casting out spoons and then bait on heavy slip-sinkers, but the rushing air actually drove our attempts back, limiting every throw to a feeble fifty feet or so.

This window had been slammed, on my fingers it seemed, by the way they felt after fishing and climbing among the rocks for a few minutes. We drove home with the heater cranked, and the snow falling in big, white globs.

2/25/01
Planned to fish Sunday. It snowed all day Saturday, and most of the night. Brad was supposed go, but had stomach flu. I woke to my alarm clock at 4:30 am, finding calm winds and clear cold skies; twelve degrees Fahrenheit. The front had passed and the day looked perfect for fishing, but without a friend to help me if I became stuck in the snow at the boat ramp, I wimped out. My wife offered me a massage if I came back to bed, and I took one last look out the window at my car, which was entirely hidden, canoe and all, beneath a huge, fluffy white loaf. I fell back asleep to the roar of diesel engines and reverse-gear warning beeps from the city's fleet of monster snow plows, clearing Highway 50.

3/1/01
Finally. I stopped checking weather reports, simply going outside and looking at the sky, feeling the air. That's how I realized, as the wind died on Wednesday night, that the window of opportunity might just squeeze open wide enough for a morning's fishing before the predicted weekend storms. I managed to talk Brad into another assault on Cave Rock on March first.

This has been a powerfully cold winter, and it was a balmy five degrees as we pushed off in my canoe, heading south. The weather's made the fish sluggish; fast trolled plugs have not been productive in the shallows I frequent, but minnows trolled slowly behind dodgers are drawing plenty of bites from 2 to 3 pound rainbows as well some mackinaw to 5 pounds.

The cold weather has put the fish on a mid-day feeding pattern as well. On the last few trips, I've caught all my trout between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. I still go at dawn, though, because I'm a nut. That, and it's the best time to trap minnows. We trolled Cave Rock to Zephyr Cove and back again without a bite, until by late morning, we were at an outcropping of rocks near our starting point.

This lake has over 1,600 feet of depth, 125,000 surface acres, and on the last few trips here, every fish I catch is from one small area of submerged rocks, in twenty feet of water, right near one of the most popular boat ramps. And these are good fish, mind you. I was just telling this to Brad, my poor friend who was enduring yet another fishless morning, as we approached the zone.

We trolled dodgers with six pound fluorocarbon leaders, and live minnows threaded onto treble hooks. The scattered clouds that had been passing all morning seemed to gather, until the sun was hidden and a stiff breeze immediately began blowing, as if in response. I tried to convey to my fishing buddy how much confidence I had in the area we were now trolling, but he was eating a sandwich and speaking vaguely of having to urinate.

"Whack!" I yelled as my spinning rod bent and kicked in its holder. I snatched it and set the hook, feeling a fish for a second, then nothing. I reeled in to find the minnow and hook missing, my leader broken at the terminal end.

"Crappy knot or your drag's too heavy." Brad offered, neatly summing up my problem. Now I had his attention. He wrapped up his half-eaten sandwich and grabbed his rod from the holder. I told him to reel in, and to the best of my ability, I went back and repeated the exact same troll that I had just run.

"Whack." I said again. This time I was holding the rod, reacting instantly, but I had turned down the drag, and felt a surging fish take several yards of line off the spool, then again nothing. "Damn." I muttered, reeling in to find a mangled, washed-out minnow. For the third time in five minutes, I put on a fresh minnow and repeated the troll.

Brad had now changed from a minnow behind flashers to the same silver Sep's Pro dodger I was using, but just as I finished feeding out fifty yards of line, and turned up my drag a single click, I felt a tap, and set my hook, reeling tight to another good fish. This one stayed on, kicking hard like a mackinaw as I worked it slowly in. When it ran straight at the boat, though, I became suspicious, as this is a favorite trick of the local brown trout. I reeled furiously to keep tight, then sure enough, thirty feet out the fish barreled to the surface and made four flopping leaps, pulling the dodger into the air. A fat, copper-flanked brown trout, it made a half dozen short but furious runs under the canoe, forcing me to dig my rod tip deep into the water to keep the line off the motor. Eventually, it attempted another leap, then came to rest on the surface, on its side, and Brad scooped it into the net. I kept the fish and barbecued it that night. It measured just under 23 inches, and had a large minnow, what appeared to be a small trout and several crayfish, half-digested, in its belly.

Another hour of trolling did not produce a bite, so we headed back to the boat ramp. That's Tahoe fishing. Some days you will be lucky to catch one fish, but that one could be the trout of a lifetime.

Next week I will be offering the first of a series of technique articles on fly-fishing with nymphs, to prepare you for opening day on your favorite streams. Unless, of course, I catch a really big trout while trolling, in which case I'll just show some photos and blab on about the glory of the battle- "200 pound man defeats 10 pound trout." Stay dialed!

Until next time!
Mark (Never stand in a canoe) Wiza