Speaking of poop, let's delve into today's subject. I was at the K-Mart recently, in the fishing tackle aisle (where else?), when I was stopped by an excited young man looking for the Power Bait display. As I showed him the jars of colored, floating dough he was looking for, he related how he had been fishing the West Carson River at the Pickett's Junction bridge, and had caught some really big trout, but only on the Spring Green Power Bait, with glitter. Then he said "One fish was at least five pounds. It was 18 inches and fat. I think it was a native."

Now I to ponder this for a moment, because my first impulse was to set him straight about his 18 inch, five pound native. They stock large rainbows right at the bridge, just for the tourists. They are fat as melons, and at 18 inches, weigh maybe three pounds. I let him have his fantasy, though, and he bought several jars.

Do I weigh all my fish? No. I used to (bass fishing), and from my experience I have devised some guidelines to bring those trout stories under control:

A trout or char of 18 inches will average two pounds, three if obese as a hormone- injected turkey.

To be five pounds, a trout, on average, needs to be 25 inches long. A six pounder is 26 inches, and so on up to thirty inches, ten pounds! Remember, this is only an average! Your fish will vary! A skinny young mackinaw, or lake trout, may barely tip the scales at four pounds when 25 inches long, but a rotund, 21 inch brook trout will weigh the same.

I didn't catch any of those on my last trip to Caples Lake, but I did hook some good, 12 to 14 inch brookies. I brought a friend, Brad Brosman, and trolled from my canoe on August 6. The lake was almost completely calm when we started at sunrise, using my electric trolling motor to pull large Rapala and Rebel plugs 30 feet deep for the mackinaw and brown trout. Well, it was worth a shot, but when the sun hit the water and we had changed plugs and depths without a bite, Brad said "Let's put on flashers and dodgers!" Now, he hasn't been fishing in a while, but he knows what attractor blades mean in a lake like this-

Fish! Maybe only hatchery fish. Maybe holdovers. Once in a while a wild fish. Something, damn it! We slowed our trolling speed and started experimenting- I had one small rainbow on a nightcrawler, hooked on 6 pound leader behind the dodger- then nothing! Brad's 'flashers with a wobbling plug' gambit also failed, so we began experimenting, eventually discovering that when we added a 1/2 ounce, rubber core sinker on our superline, ahead of silver flashers, with a three foot leader and a half nightcrawler, then we put this whole crazy setup into the water and let out 75 yards of line- whack! The secrets of the deepwater brook trout were revealed. I had never hooked many brookies in Caples, but here they were. Whenever we sent our baits to the 35 - 40 foot depth at which these metal flashers and weight will troll on thin Spiderwire, brookies would slam them. Most were around twelve inches, and appeared to have been recently stocked. We caught them all over the lake, but in one spot near the dam, I could actually see groups of fish on my Fishin' Buddy depthfinder, near the bottom in forty feet of water. We had a double hookup as our baits went through the area, and though I lost my fish, Brad reeled in an honest 14 incher, a brookie nearing one pound. We retrolled the area and each time through, the results were the same- "Whack!" said Brad as his rod bent over again. He was grinning like a crazy old fisherman, reeling in brookies and throwing them on a stringer. He barely ever gets out fishing, though, folks, so don't worry, he's not a threat to the lake. A guy who loves fishing but never gets to go is like a kid- you have to let him keep a few trout. We ended up keeping four each (I have to take some home so my wife won't complain about the cost of gas and nightcrawlers and superline). We released several fish and lost quite a few as well. When cleaned, two of the 14 inch fish we kept revealed the pink flesh of holdover trout, while the 12 inch, freshly planted brookies had creamy white meat.

Having killed enough trout for the week, on August 8 I fly-fished the catch-and -release section of the East Carson River outside Markleeville. Yep, No-Kill, Zero Limit, Love 'Em and Leave 'Em, whatever you want to call it. I call it a place where you can catch wild trout. I did this by beating the heat and the crowds, parking at Hangman's Bridge at dawn, hiking downstream to fish each pool. I hike downstream, but fish upstream, starting at the tail of the pool or run. This allows me to cover water efficiently without alerting the fish, and often I can take fish from the middle or tail of a pool, then move up to the head and hook another. This is what I did in the first deep, canyon slot I fished.

I generally throw flies like a bait-chucker or lure slinger. Today I'm flinging weighted nymphs upstream with a foam strike indicator, which is a little bobber. I allow the flies to tap the bottom, floating back downstream in a dead drift. This is easier said than done, but when you have truly mastered the art of the natural drift, all things are possible, grasshopper. Think of it, working so hard, wading in cold, fast water, casting a fly rod for hours, all to present a little fake bug as if it's doing NOTHING, just drifting helplessly, effortlessly. It's a paradox, and three trout, each one taken on my bright green, size 14 Marabou Caddis nymph. I tie this nymph (barbless of course) on a short dropper leader from my point nymph, a weighted woolly bugger. Yes, dead drift your woolly buggers! They are deadly nymphs in the smaller sizes, and when weighted, can act instead of lead splitshot to bump the bottom and present the smaller, second fly just above the rocks. This smaller fly was hammered mid-drift by another chunky, 13 inch rainbow in the next pool as well. I worked my way downstream, catching two more rainbows, one wild and one stocked. I was just refelecting on how much better the wild trout fight as I approached a favorite hole. This was the pool where I hooked a large, 22 inch hatchery fish on my last trip, and though it took a while to land, it never jumped or really tried to leave the pool.

On my second drift this time, though, I knew something was different, as my strike indicator jumped at the tail of the pool, then sliced up to the head in a split second, and a rainbow exploded three feet out of the whitewater. I think I said "Yeee-hah!" about eleven times as I had to actually bend my rod hard downstream to stop the fish from leaving the head of the pool. When it began to come back down with the current, it leaped again, ran my drag as it buzzed downstream, then leaped a third time. Now it was in the downstream riffles, making a break for freedom at this end of the pool. I put my 3x leader to the test, bending my rod over in a tight hoop toward the bank, and with one more leap, the trout was back in the pool, near enough to net. I could see this fish was wild, with all its fins, beautiful metallic scarlet sides, and a streamlined, muscular body, about 19 inches and two and a half pounds. It had the black and olive Bead Chain Bugger clamped in its jaw. I left the trout in the water as I brought out my surgical pliers and easily removed the barbless fly. This started it squirming out of my hands and it quickly darted back, deep into the pool. Mini-Steelhead. That fish outfought a substantially larger hatchery rainbow. Not just in strength, but in style, baby! I caught several more Really Tiny Steelhead, then quit at nine when I saw the first other angler coming downstream toward me. Of the nine or ten pools I fished on the way down three hours earlier, there was now a flyrod or two waving at almost every one. Good luck boys! I thought- I had enjoyed complete solitude and great fishing on the same stretch that was now crowded, with a blazing sun overhead and nobody yelling "Yeee-Hah!" If you don't like trolling for brookies casting flies for rainbows, then I have another suggestion for you- kokanee and mackinaw on Lake Tahoe or Stampede Reservoir. Trolling flashers with a single kernel of corn (Green Giant shoepeg white corn, if you can find it) is currently producing limits of kokes in the one pound range at 80 feet off Tahoe's south shore. Anglers looking for big mackinaw will troll a kokanee imitating plug (Try a J-plug or a large Rapala in a blue/silver or black/silver ) a bit deeper to target the macks that often stage below the kokanee schools to feed on them. On Stampede Reservoir north of Truckee, kokanee action is consistent as well. This lake is known for particularly large landlocked salmon, record-class at times, and Fish Sniffer reader Keith Kerrigan recently emailed me and told me about catching kokes to two and a half pounds. Well, I started this week's article talking about estimating fish size, so let's bring it full circle. I salute Keith for his honesty, because he wrote me back after he competed in a derby, a contest in which he did very well, netting some 30 kokes, but the largest fish were actually put on a scale, and they turned out to be no more than 25 ounces, closer to one and one half pounds. If other readers would like to help round out my reports with Tahoe area fish stories, feel free to email me. Just make sure to include a photo if the tale is too amazing. Until next time, here's just such a photo to keep you fired up for fishing and to help you visualize trout weight per length. I caught these fish from my canoe on Tahoe last spring, and yes, I killed and ate both of these wild trout. I also brought them to the Sportsman tackle shop in South Lake Tahoe to be weighed. The large fish is a 10.5 pound, 30 inch mackinaw. The smaller fish is a brown trout that, though certainly not skinny, weighed only 2.75 pounds at slightly over 21 inches. Sure takes all those "five pounders" you hear about down a notch or two, doesn't it?

Remember, never stand in a canoe.
Mark Wiza
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