"Whoa. Whoa! Fish on! Feels like a good one! What the hell size leader did you say was on here?"

"Six pound." I replied as I turned off my electric motor and reeled in my line to make room for the fight. I had pre-tied leaders for this trip at home the previous night, and appealed to Brad's sense of laziness by handing him a rod already rigged. I have to trick him into using light line, you see, and I knew what was coming next-

"Great. Mr. Ultralight gives me six-pound leader and I have a Tahoe pig on the end of it."

"It's actually six-pound fly fishing tippet; about the thickness of two-pound test mono." I said this and succumbed to a fit of cruel laughter as I watched the color drain from his face. The fish came in slowly as he nursed it, babied it toward the boat, and it responded to this coddling by coming in easily, until just thirty feet out it came to the surface, saw the canoe, and shot back down and away, taking back all the line Brad had so painstakingly gained. He looked positively ill at that point because we had a quick look at his trout when it came up, and both agreed it was a five pound rainbow.

By then I had retrieved all my line, so I kicked the trolling motor to high speed for a moment and swung my canoe around to follow the fish, as Brad reeled furiously to keep the line tight. I curved wide, taking us well out over a flat sand bottom. The trout was sulking among the near-shore boulders, and I encouraged my friend to pressure it out of the structure and onto the sand.

"You need to get him out here, where there's nothing to hang up on." I helped with short kicks of low-speed power from my motor whenever our opponent relaxed its efforts slightly, and we soon succeeded in dragging it into open water. Now it was Brad's show. Seven times, he turned his reel's drag up a notch, worked the fish in, then backed off the drag again as it sped away and ran harmlessly along the featureless lake floor. When it finally came up and wallowed for a moment, just under the surface, I swept my long-handled net beneath and hoisted it into the canoe. Brad's rod tip and dodger suddenly flew upward as well; at that moment the flailing trout had snapped his leader. Strangely enough, when we examined our prize we noticed it had fairly fresh, slashing wounds near its tail. Brad said they were from the claws of an overambitious osprey or bald eagle, while to me, they looked like tooth marks from a monster mackinaw. Either way, we marveled at the mystery predator that would attack a 24 inch rainbow trout. We trolled to Zephyr Point, and rounding it saw wind and waves building rapidly from the south, so we hastily aborted our mission and raced the rollers back to Cave Rock.

2/27/02- Logan's Run

Like Zephyr Cove, Logan's Shoals has patches of rocky bottom that hold fish, so this time when Brad and I launched the canoe at Cave Rock, we headed north. We trolled Rapala plugs for an hour without a bite, then switched to attractor blades and bait, pulling them slowly, just off the bottom in 20 to 30 feet of water. I had a strike on my dodger-and-crawler rig, but the fish came off, and we worked the area for another hour without a repeat performance. Time for Plan B. One should always have an alternative strategy in mind when fishing Tahoe, and Logan's and adjacent South Point not only provide decent shallow-water structure, but also a productive deepwater drop just 100 yards or so further out. This is an important consideration when fishing a giant, frigid wind-prone lake from a canoe.

Brad was already using eight-pound fluorocarbon leader (he made me swear never to give him anything lighter again) on a medium-light baitcasting rod to troll flashers and a minnow in the shallows, so he simply twisted a couple of one-ounce rubber core sinkers onto his main line above the flashers. I switched from my spinning rig to a medium Ugly Stik casting rod and 18 pound leadcore line, then we traveled out into the lake until my sonar unit showed the bottom dropping down to 150 feet. Here we lined up parallel with shore, and I turned the motor to high speed while we both fed line out under tension. The sinkers and metal flashers brought Brad's minnow down to over 60 feet deep on a long line, and I let out the leadcore on my Shakespeare Tidewater linecounter reel until my dodger and minnow on the outside rod was running at about 70 feet. As we switched our reels off free-spool and checked our drag settings, I angled back toward shore and watched my sonar until we found 80 foot depths and a rocky bottom, with scattered fish just off the rocks. I gave warning: "They're down there right where our baits are. Hang on for a hook-up." I glanced from my rod tip to my friend's, and saw that he was one step ahead, already fighting a fish.

"Feels like a solid mack." Brad noted. I reminded him to take it easy, what with sinkers, flashers, substantial depth and a good fish all working against his eight pound leader.

"You want me to reel in and kill the motor?" I asked. My answer came from my own surging rod tip and chattering reel clicker-"Double!" I exclaimed as I quickly removed the rod from its holder. The separate battles were strangely synchronized, with both fish running and stopping at the same time, until they came to the surface simultaneously, tangled our lines together, and I scooped them both into the net; twin mackinaw, four pounds each.

We rebaited and trolled the same run several more times, taking a half-dozen more mackinaw from three to five pounds. We each kept that first one, releasing the others gently. By late morning we had a lull in the action, and as we debated leaving the area, Brad hooked a fish that ran harder than the rest. Before I could remind him to go easy though, he reared back and started horsing it up until he snapped the leader. Slumping in his seat, he said he didn't want to fish anymore, so I steered my vessel back to Cave Rock as Brad smacked his forehead and muttered- "eight pound" over and over.

Sinkers and leadcore line may not be some people's idea of light tackle, but when coupled with long, limber rods, small attractor blades, light leader and large trout, they are not only highly effective for trolling down to 100 feet, but they also allow deep fish to give a good fight, a fight requiring finesse on the part of the angler.

Fishing the shallows with spinning gear is my first choice on Tahoe at this time of year though, both for the sport and the surprisingly fat trout that can be found in skinny water. It's the preferred environment of rainbows that love to leap when hooked on top, and the mighty mackinaw also bite in rocky shallows, fighting furiously and defying their reputation as sluggish, deepwater fish. Hey, wait a minute. There's something missing from this story! For the truly possessed trout angler, there is only one worthy fish, one king of the shoreline. Come on, you know you want it! Brown trout!

3/3/02 The Browns Of March

It was about time. Every year they suddenly appear and start biting along rocky shorelines at the end of winter. When I told Brad, my faithful fishing companion, that we would be catching a brown trout on this trip he just laughed, then started calling me "Great Swami, Seer Of Visions". What he failed to consider was that my mystical powers come not from a crystal ball but from an extensive fishing log I have kept for the last several years, documenting my catches and revealing patterns.

I threatened to give him a vision or two, then we launched the 17 foot Coleman canoe, traveling in the pre-dawn black, illuminated by my portable bow and stern lights, as required by law. The lake was flat calm as I picked my way past the rockpile islands of Sand Harbor, then cranked the trolling motor on high and headed south past Sand Point at five miles per hour. Brad suggested that we skip trolling plugs altogether, and go right to live bait. He wanted to run the Sidekick dodger and nightcrawler setup that caught him his trophy rainbow the week before, and I obliged him, opting for a silver Sep's Pro dodger and minnow on my rod. As we crossed in front of a tumble of boulders that extended down a hillside and into the lake, we let out our lines. Twenty minutes passed without a bite as we continued to troll south, and my friend grew restless, suggesting we try something else. "No stinking way." I told him. The gray light of dawn was gathering and a breeze from the east rippled the water. "This is perfect. There's a bunch of rocks off the next point, then a seventy-foot hole just a little further out. Something's going to happen, I just know it."

Brad then switched to calling me 'Miss Cleo, psychic friend', but I've learned never to ignore the fisherman's knot in the pit of my stomach, and just as I grabbed the rod from its holder, it bucked in my hand. My comedian friend was on a roll this morning, and he immediately launched into the theme from The Twilight Zone- "dee-dee dee-dee, dee-dee dee-dee."

"Dee-dee-dee your damn line in, this is a good one." I retorted. That he did, reeling and clearing the way for a fish that was now coming in way too quickly.

"Looks like you've got a twelve inch rainbow.... or a big old brown. We'll find out in a minute, it's running right at us." Then there it was, twenty feet deep and almost under the canoe- we both saw it briefly flash a thick square tale and silvery side before it panicked and came to life, surging down into the rocks and peeling eight-pound Berkeley Sensation line off my spinning reel. It wasn't the main line I was worried about though, but the six-pound fluorocarbon leader. I lost sight of my fish but Brad told me he could still see it, and that it was shaking its head furiously among the rocks. "Oh yeah, downtown-brown," he went on, "I can see the spots. Smart bastard. Runs at the boat, acts like a little wimpy fish, then goes for the rocks right under us!"

I was dropping my rod tip deep into the water, to keep the line clear of my motor as I repeatedly switched from one side of the canoe to the other to keep up with the fish. As soon as I'd have my rod up and line clear to fight from the port side, the trout would pass directly beneath my canoe and force me to change back to starboard by jamming my nine-foot rod under and around the canoe's stern. Back and forth, back and forth, acting like it actually knew that if it caught the line on the motor or hull, it could break off and escape. Smart bastard is right, I thought. I was having a hard time controlling this fish, and could feel my line and leader raking over rocks on the bottom. We were right on the edge of the structure though, with a smooth sand bottom just a little further out. It was then Brad's turn to play clairvoyant as he read my mind when he said- "Get him over the sand, like we did with my rainbow last week"

Turning the motor on low speed, I loosened my drag and gave a little more line to the trout as I tried to circle out and to the side. This technique, if done gently enough, will often slowly move a fish off the rocks, but now I could again see my adversary through twenty feet of window-clear water, and he was having none of it. He would come along just fine until I had him near the edge of the rocks, then he'd go berserk and burn back toward shore, back among the boulders, again as if he knew exactly what he needed to do to defeat me. I say 'he' because we could actually see the elongated jaw of a male trout as I managed to work him just over the line in this furious tug-of-war, just over the sand. The fish suddenly seemed to realize it had lost its rocky refuge; it looked at me momentarily, then bowed up and flew straight at the canoe, wrapping my line on the propeller. I'm not kidding, the damn thing looked right in my eyes before acting, as if gauging my intelligence and strength, and finding them lacking.

Luckily, my easily distracted fishing partner had a moment of fish-netting brilliance, as he swept down and in one fluid motion broke my frayed leader and snared the wild trout. Brad lifted it toward me, but I just stared at the squirming mass in black mesh, feeling shaky and unfocused. The five-pound brown had reduced me to a nervous wreck. All right, so maybe I can't actually prove that light line catches more fish, but who cares?

Wiza's Light Line Trolling Tips

Boat Control: whatever size vessel you're fishing from, if you use light line, be prepared to stop, back down, or even turn around to chase a big trout.

Rods: long, light action models help cushion the shock of hard runs, leaps and vicious headshakes; they also are highly useful for thrusting into the water to keep large trout from tangling on your boat or motor.

Line: Use the smallest diameter practical for the conditions at hand; this could mean 12 or 15 pound line if hunting giant mackinaw with the largest lures, but 8 pound is a good place to start. Invest in quality material as well. I'm constantly experimenting to find the perfect fishing line, and I currently tie my light-line trolling leaders from Orvis or Umpqua fly-fishing tippet, and Stren or Bass Pro XPS fluorocarbon.

Mental Preparation: Practice relaxation techniques, study Zen philosophy, get a prescription for tranquilizers, learn to live with heartbreak. Light line fishing is like walking a tightrope, which reminds me, don't work without a net!

Until next time, remember, never stand in a canoe!
Mark Wiza
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