The exact timing of ice-out varies each year according to the weather, so I take scouting trips, driving 40 miles from my house in South Lake Tahoe each week to check the condition of Silver Lake's frozen cap. By late April this year, there was a significant area of open water near the dam, and by May 12, the lake was completely ice-free. That night I packed up my tackle and topped off the charge on my deep-cycle batteries, preparing for a trolling adventure.

The next morning I launched my Coleman canoe from the dam area well before sunrise and turned on my electric motor to take me from the shallows near the marina toward the lake's northeast end. Yes, trout bite best in the early morning, but I had another reason for starting in the pre-dawn dark. The Internet weather report I read before leaving the house had called for calm winds overnight, then a lake-wind-advisory by late morning. This is important information- when the wind rushes down the steep walls of the surrounding granite cirque onto the Silver Lake, things can turn ugly quickly for operators of small watercraft. I recommend looking at the Tahoe area forecast on weather.com or wunderground.com before a trip to any of the high lakes in the Carson Pass area.

The water was disturbed only by a slight ripple, the air nearly still as I started out. With luck, I would catch some fish early and be ready to leave when the wind built up. My first strategy was to troll floating plugs, which had worked very well for me the previous year. I have rod holders mounted on my canoe, and always purchase the two-rod stamp with my California fishing license, so I pulled two lures at once, a rainbow Rapala on one rod, and a jointed Rebel on the other. Following the contours of shoreline, I moved forward in a zigzag pattern and quickly hooked and reeled in a sixteen inch brown. Such a good start gave me confidence in the action to come, so I gently released that first fish and resumed my troll.

I then continued for another hour without a hit on either rod, despite trying different lure patterns, trolling speeds and areas of the lake. The wind had not yet arrived, and as the sun peeked over the top of the stark eastern ridgeline, I saw numerous splashes and swirls on the lake surface, well offshore over relatively deep water. Switching tactics, I trolled through these disturbances slowly, trailing a flasher-and-worm combination, and was immediately rewarded as fish attacked my nightcrawler with abandon. Rainbows and browns from 10 to 14 inches were coming in as fast I could get my line back out. They were not the trophy trout I was hunting for, but I enjoyed the frantic action, and found that they were all hooked in the jaw or mouth, allowing me to release every fish in good condition. This went on for over an hour, with nearly a dozen visiting my net before returning, weaker but a bit wiser, to the lake.

Then, around 8:30 a.m., it came- first just a gently building breeze, then again calm, then a hard, unexpected wind and howl in my ears. The canoe veered off course and as I corrected with my 36 pound thrust Minn Kota motor, I scanned the lake, finding dark windlines moving toward me from the south. A steady 10 mile per hour blow started in, punctuated by stronger surges. My canoe is a large and stable model, though, and the waves were just starting to build; the situation was not dangerous, simply inconvenient as I found I had to travel at a higher speed to correct for the wind and stay on course. I had been using the standard slow presentation for trolling my flashers and nightcrawler, and when unable to do so in the changing conditions I reeled in and switched tactics, resorting again to floating minnow-plugs on spinning gear. On my outer rod I used the rainbow Rebel that had caught my first fish of the morning, but on my new ultralight steelhead rod rigged with 6 pound line, I tried a size 11 black-and-silver Rapala Jointed.

Both of these lures respond best to an upbeat trolling speed, and I used this to my advantage as I turned up my motor and headed into the wind. As I passed the waterfall where the headwaters of the Silver Fork American River crash dramatically into the lake, my 9 foot 'noodle' rod bounced in its holder twice then went down hard. I snatched it up and reeled tight to a fish better than any I had caught so far. I fought it one-handed for a moment as I quickly turned my motor down to low-speed and steered slightly offshore, so I could work in open water yet not tangle with my other line.

After a few short runs and a lot of furious head-shaking, a three-pound mackinaw circled within reach of my net, the Rapala jammed in the corner of its jaw. I considered taking it home, but quickly threw it back when I saw that the wind had shifted, and my canoe was tacking off course toward shoreline rocks. No time to find my stringer and struggle with a flopping fish, I thought, and as I turned the motor back to high speed and set my bow back into the wind and growing waves, I considered whether there was time for any more fishing at all.

The mack had struck hard, though, and put up a great struggle on light line. The wind had now brought clouds scudding in from the south to block the sun, turning the choppy lake surface a greasy gray-brown color. "Big fish conditions" I said aloud as I stayed on course and let the Rapala back out to join the Rebel minnow that was still wiggling through the water behind my vessel. I continued south, quartering into the wind then turning away slightly to let it catch and push me the other way, making for a natural 'S' shaped trolling pattern as I neared the lake's shallow southern end. I'd just begun to cut further west, to cross the lake and troll near Treasure Island, when my new fishing rod bent over again.

This time I knew right away there was a problem, though, as too many things happened too quickly. First, I could barely get the rod out of its holder, it was bent so hard. The spinning reel's drag let line out at a slow, steady rate as if I'd snagged bottom, then abruptly sped up into a screaming run as I took it in hand. I turned the drag down several clicks and aimed my rod tip straight towards what was obviously a very large fish, to reduce pressure on my line as it whipped through the water. I didn't know what I had, but it was over 5 pounds, maybe 10. When the first run slowed again, and I was actually able to gain a few yards of line back, I smiled confidently. This was the last moment of control I would feel for over an hour.

My attention to steering had been forgotten for a moment in my excitement, and that's all the wind needed to drive me off course again. I held the rod high with one hand and reached for my motor's tiller to correct my course, or even chase the fish if needed. Just then a gust spun the canoe almost completely around, and as I increased speed to recover I also forgot for a moment that I was trolling another line, which I then caught and promptly sucked into my motor.

On electric trolling motors, there is a small gap between the propeller and the main housing of the motor, and fishing line can get stuck in that crack and spun around the propeller shaft and shear-pin underneath the propeller head. If enough line builds up it can actually bind and stop the motor- this is what happened to me, and the only way to remedy the situation is to take off the prop and cut the line away. My canoe was now dead in the water, the wind was pushing me broadside to the northeast, and my fish was still on, heading in the opposite direction and picking up steam.

I howled and cursed and prayed all at once- "Jesus, what the hell am I going to do?" The fish was too large to simply be dragged through the water; I'd have to chase it, but I'd just lost my motor, and the wind was increasing. The only solution I could think of felt like the stupidest thing I'd ever done, but I put the rod, with my fish-of-a-lifetime on the other end, back in the rod holder. There were perhaps 50 yards of line left on the reel, and I adjusted the drag to the maximum setting I dared, then unscrewed my motor from the canoe's hull and brought it into my lap, where I frantically tried to remove the propeller to get at the tangle of fishing line beneath. There's only one nut holding the prop to the motor, but of course I had not brought the correct wrench to turn it, and scraped away ineffectually at it with my needle-nose fishing pliers for a few seconds before looking up to see my reel was nearly out of line. I picked the rod back up and worked some back on the reel, more by simply stretching my line toward the breaking point than by actually moving the fish. At this point, the trout was a living sea anchor, holding my boat nearly stationary against the wind. Whitecapped waves slapped my hull with a growing intensity, and I was faced with the heartbreaking possibility of having to break the fish off if conditions worsened.

Several times I put the rod in the holder to work on my motor, then snatched it up to pump a few wraps of line back on the reel before the spool emptied completely. No use. I could not get the propeller off and was gaining back less line each time. After another quick round of cursing I came up with another stupid idea. The rod went back in its holder, and I grabbed a paddle and started ripping it through the water furiously, paddling backwards as hard as I could. To my surprise, with every few strokes, the bend in my rod would lessen, and I found I could quickly rotate my reel handle a turn or two with the rod still in the holder, to take up slack. In this exhausting, inch-worm fashion, I began to close the gap, and just as my muscles felt ready to give out the line went loose, then swung directly under the boat and tightened again downwind of me. Yes! I took my rod out of the holder one last time, my arms shaky and burning, and for the first time fought the fish in close quarters. After an hour on the line, it still throbbed heavily and pulled my rod tip into the water. We stalemated for another fifteen minutes, then I tried one more risky maneuver, loosening my drag a bit and letting what I now knew could only be a giant mackinaw surge for the bottom. When it felt me relax tension, it moved quickly at first, but fatigue must have been as great in the fish's body as in mine because it soon paused, and I exploited this immediately, pumping it up and increasing my pull as it moved, gaining momentum with each sweep of my rod. I cringed as my line sang like a guitar string in the wind, but then there it was, flopping at the surface, my Rapala barely attached by a single hook-point to its hard, bony lip. It slid fairly easily into my long handled net, but when I dragged it up into my canoe and dumped it on the floor it went berserk, flopping and thrashing until it knocked open a box of lures and slapped them around with its tail, hooking one into the leg of my Gore-Tex pants.

I felt positively nauseous from the adrenaline and physical effort, yet blessed by The Lord to have caught such a fish, and immensely thankful that the wind was now coming from the southeast, pushing my vessel almost directly back to the dam, where I had parked my car. My gratitude was so great that I began babbling like an Oscar winner at the Academy Awards- "I'd like to thank the 6 pound Berkley Trilene XL, without which none of this would have possible, and my Rapala, which remained committed to the project against all odds..."

The mighty mackinaw looked to be around 20 pounds, but I haven't had too much experience making such outrageous estimates, so when I finally paddled ashore I stopped in to Kays Silver Lake resort to see if they had a scale.

Now this is California, the land of tony resorts, herbal facial wraps and attendants trained both as massage therapists and wine stewards, so I'd like to take a moment here to salute the fine people at Kay's, who 'keep it real' by providing good, old-fashioned poor service, with a down-home "We don't cotton to no outsiders around these parts" flavor. I walked into the musty general store, and finding no one at the counter, moved to a back room, where I saw a woman seated at a computer.

"Hi!" I said. "How ya doing?"

"Christ!" She replied. "Don't sneak up like that, you scared me! What do you want?"

"Uh, I was wondering if you had a scale set up, to weigh the big fish I caught."

"No, nope."

"Really?"

"What did I just say?"

"Oh well, too bad- it's really a big fish. Do you know what the lake record mackinaw is?"

"No."

"I heard it was 18 pounds, and I think this one might be bigger."

"That sounds about right. I should probably know this." At this her tone changed, and she changed her story as well, walking to the front of the store to hand me a rusty old Stren 50 pound scale and a camera. The fish sent the scale's needle to just over 21 pounds, and that's what she wrote on the border of the Polaroid print before taping it to the back of the cash register. At home I stood on my digital bathroom scale with my catch and it came up 23, but when I cleaned it I found two 12 inch rainbow trout, half-digested in its belly. I'll split the difference and call it 22 pounds, the largest trout I've ever caught. Dan Bacher, editor of the Fish Sniffer print edition, tells me that it is in fact the lake record, beating an 18 pound mackinaw caught in the summer of 2000. This would be a great catch anywhere, but is particularly astounding in that mackinaw have only been stocked in Silver Lake since the early 1990's. There are those that complain that since that time, the quality of the lake's legendary brown trout fishing has declined due to predation from the mackinaw, but any fish that can grow from fingerling size to over 20 pounds in ten years is fine with me, and in that mackinaw are one of the longest-lived salmonid species, we can only expect to see my record broken before long. That's fine too, records are made to be broken, and I challenge Fish Sniffer readers to try and take my title away! While you're there, stop by Kay's, say hello to Mona, and savor her sharp-tongued response as you buy that six dollar bag of potato chips!

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