At this time of year, particularly in low light periods (dawn, dusk, and overcast or stormy) the resident salmonids of this huge, 12 by 22 mile, natural mountain lake come out of the depths and chase minnows, especially over shallow, rocky areas near deep water. Trolling Rapala or Rebel Minnow plugs in silver, gold and rainbow trout patterns is highly effective. One key to hooking these wary trout is trolling a long, light line; up to 100 yards or more of four to ten pound monofilament, or superline with a long leader of mono (better yet, try a quality flyfishing tippet or fluorocarbon leader). Troll relatively fast, as well, 2 to 5 miles per hour, so the fish don't have time to see your offering as counterfeit in the incredibly clear water. Finally, know the running depth of the lure you're pulling and keep it within a few feet of the bottom : a #13 floating Rapala generally needs only ten to twelve feet of depth to avoid hitting the rocks, while a #11 countdown Rapala needs closer to twenty feet. This is knowledge gained by experience, namely extensive trolling while looking at a depth finder. It also involves some fancy boating to closely follow the contours of Tahoe's abrupt underwater shelves and drop offs.

As winter approaches and other area fisheries close or freeze over, I am once again settling into my favorite off-season routine, fishing Tahoe every week. I've been out a dozen times since October, learning something new every trip. In early fall, the action for big rainbow trout was outstanding, and with the most recent cold spell, mackinaw and browns have started hitting in the shallows as well. In one recent week, I fished three different areas of the lake, catching trout in skinny water at each spot. I also had an adventure or two, which is to be expected on this mountain sea.

Thursday, 11/30/00, Zephyr Cove:
First Fall Brown

Launching at Cave Rock shortly before sunrise, I trolled plugs south to Zephyr Cove. It was still nearly black out, overcast, and the lake had a slight ripple, but no real waves. Running my trolling motor at the second highest speed, I steered the canoe in gentle S-curves, tight to the rocky shoreline. Soon the ragged, heavy gray clouds were letting through those shafts of sun you see in religious paintings, and I watched a fleeting transformation, no more than five minutes long, during which the clouds turned from black to blue, then purple to red, orange to yellow to white, as the morning star ascended Round Hill and the peaks behind. I sat truly in awe, as I do for every Tahoe sunrise, and happily trolled for close to an hour without a bite.

By this time I was near the shallow, rocky shoals off Zephyr Cove, and had a decision to make. I would need to take my slender vessel several hundred yards off shore to fish the area. At this time of year conditions have to be perfect for me to attempt such a venture- If the lake blew up with wind and waves, I'd be at least five minutes from land, which is a mighty long swim in 40 degree water. I have never tipped my canoe, though, excluding rivers, and the breeze caused by the heat of the sun's first rays had now died down.

"Looks good!" I said aloud, swinging my bow out into the lake. The depthfinder informed me when I hit the shoal, as I traveled for several minutes over a sandy, flat bottom thirty feet down, then watched the screen of my Fishin' Buddy sonar scroll a jumble of rocks and little fish symbols, like a Gameboy video fishing game. As soon as I found this offshore structure, I traveled along the edge of it, trolling a jointed, clown-pattern Rapala. This has been my hot lure all season, catching mackinaw on Caples Lake, brown trout on Silver, and rainbows on Tahoe. Everybody loves a clown, I guess, and the #9 model has been so productive that I went out and bought one a size larger. I was running this new lure, with a pattern that imitates nothing in the lake; its wide wiggle brings out the flash of silver-plated sides, a fluorescent-yellow back and bright, red head. After five minutes, I hung it up on a shallow rock, and while reeling in to retrieve it, I cut the line off in my motor.

"Doh!" I immediately tied on the scarred #9, the one that made me go out and buy the bigger version I'd just lost. I scented my lure with Pro-Cure Trophy Trout Bait Butter, and a drop of Dr. Juice's Trout And Salmon Juice. I'm convinced these attractants work, but they have their drawbacks. If you spilled the bottle on your living room rug, you'd have to burn your house down to get rid of the smell.

Dropping the balsa-wood plug in the water boatside, I checked its action at trolling speed. It was cutting to the right, popping to the surface, so I flipped up my rod tip, swinging the line and lure into my hand. Medium pressure from my fingertips bent the wire loop at the lure's nose to the left, correcting the problem- when I again lowered it into the water, and saw the little fake minnow gyrating like a belly dancer, tracking true, I let out my line. Compared to some of the deepwater fishing methods on Tahoe, trolling with a floating plug is simplicity itself. Just open your spinning reel bail or free-spool your casting reel, keep a straight trolling line, and slightly speed up your boat until you have enough line out. This is exactly what I did, closing the bail on my eight-pound-test spinning rig when I had let out an estimated 75 yards. I was just lining up tight to the edge of the shoal again when my rod kicked in my hand. Reeling in quickly, at first I felt nothing, so while maintaining tension by sweeping my rod forward with my right hand, I swung my left back to the motor and twisted the tiller to high speed, then felt and saw the rod bend over solidly. Two more kicks in the rod tip as the boat moved forward showed me I was onto a fish, not the bottom, and I reached back again to turn off the motor. I figured the trout for a rainbow by its quick, pulsing pulls, and was delighted as it turned and swam straight toward the boat, forcing me to reel as fast as possible to keep tension, then wallowed at the surface. A brown! My first brown trout this fall at Lake Tahoe, and it was now making repeated runs for the rocky bottom. I pulled it in at the maximum drag setting I dared, then when it was closer to the canoe and seemed tired, I turned my drag down, in anticipation of the powerful death-struggle commonly exhibited by trout that have been shocked by a hook, then pulled in on a long line, to suddenly see a boat and realize "This is it!"

I don't mean to attribute human emotions to fish, but even a worm on a hook understands that moment and struggles to escape it. Time to live or die. I made the choice, though, as humans so often do, and when my prey circled near enough, I scooped up the twenty-inch, three pound Salmo Trutta with my long-handled net, then flipped it into the canoe. This will be a present for my wife; the gift she requires frequently to keep me in her good graces. She hates me going out on the big lake in cold weather, you see, but will allow it, on one condition- that I bring home fish. Not only is Tahoe trout the sweetest, purest, fish flesh anywhere, but Martha's expression and tone of voice are so sweet as well when she says "What the hell are you going fishing for if you don't bring any home?"

Further plug trolling failed to produce, and winds began to build, so I returned to Cave Rock and fished until late morning, catching one 16 inch rainbow trout while slow trolling a silver Sep's dodger and minnow. This fish was released. I want my wife happy, not fat and happy.

Sunday, 12/3/00 Emerald Bay:
Lost In The Fog

Thursday night I told my friend Brad Brosman about my brown trout at Zephyr Cove; "Time to go to west shore" he said, meaning the rocky shallows near Emerald Bay, where he's traditionally hooked browns in cold weather. On Saturday, he took another buddy and trolled the area in his aluminum V-hull, reporting a twenty-five incher, caught on a jointed, silver Rapala. When I talked to him he was still excited enough to agree to go again with me on Sunday morning. He didn't even seem to mind about the fog. For three days, the whole Tahoe basin had been subject to a near white-out of water vapor. This is not uncommon at this time of year, and in these conditions, from any of the highway passes over the mountains out of town, you can look down through clear air and see a fallen cloud; a thick, slowly swirling mist covering the first few hundred feet above Tahoe and the valley floor. From shore, the lake itself looks like a calm, slate-gray ocean, with reduced visibility making nearby water, not the distant mountains, the line of horizon. When I met Brad at his house two hours before sunrise, there was a haziness even to the streetlights right in front of me.

"So what do you think about this fog?" I asked.

"We got turned around in it for a minute yesterday. I suddenly realized that we were heading east, looking at the casino lights, then I turned around, and we could see west shore." Brad is a chronic liar, and exaggerator of truth, though, and I've known this for years, but he had such a reassuring tone that I went with it, and soon we were at the El Dorado launch ramp in South Lake Tahoe, loading his small boat with gear. Heading offshore at full throttle, we steered by the lights of the Tahoe Keys, keeping them on our left to proceed west, toward Camp Richardson. As these lights began to dim before we spotted our next waypoint, I suggested that we cut closer to shore, to keep it in sight, but was told that not only would it take twice as long to hug the shoreline to Emerald Bay, but it was too shallow for his motor as well.

"Okay, then," I replied, "But now I can't see anything!" Then I just sat there mesmerized, in a sort of milky darkness, with a few rows of ripples visible in front of me, then a wall of swirling gray.

Brad, however, degenerated quickly from "Don't worry about it, we'll see the next lights in a minute." to "Damn it! We're going in circles; I have NO IDEA where we are!"

"Well, we're not on the other side of a twenty mile lake yet with your crappy little 10 horse motor, so get a grip on yourself, man! Slow it down!" I brought out my depthfinder, and clamped it to the side of the boat. "Two hundred feet! How far can we be off shore?" Most of the middle of Lake Tahoe is well over that depth, so we couldn't have been too far out. I began to shout out the changing numbers on the depthfinder as Brad tried to turn shallower. We actually came back up into less than a hundred feet of water, which HAS to be close to shore, but then we lost it, going deeper until we exceeded the 240 foot depth limit of my sonar. We continued looking for the bottom for a few minutes, then shut off the motor, and sat in the fog.

"This is not good." said Brad. We poured hot coffee from my thermos and looked at the small waves lapping at the drfting boat. It was a bizarre feeling, a bit of dread and fear, but the lake was not stormy or windswept at all, just the tiniest breeze. We weren't in danger, just lost, and blind. We became philosophical, talking about how if the fog failed to lift, my wife and Brad's roommate knew where we were, and would notify the local authorities, who would organize a search party.

We broke out our sandwiches way too early, Brad smoked too many cigarettes, and I began tossing topwater lures, in probably 500 feet of depth, until I actually mastered, for the first time in my life, my casting reel's propensity to backlash. After probably two hours, I became a bit loopy. It was like one of those sensory deprivation chambers, only with pretzels. I could see my friend, the boat, and a little patch of water around us, but other than that, there was nothing. No lights, no shapes, not even sounds. Not a single mountain or building as a reference point. I began to feel lightheaded.

The morning sun was now illuminating the fog, turning it whiter and brighter, yet not increasing visibility a single foot. About then, Brad started beating me with his hat. Apparently, he had gone over the edge first, but I believe I may have set him off with a provocative statement.

"You know, I have a compass." I said casually.

"Here?" Brad shot back immediately, eyes wide.

"No, at home." I replied. "If we had that, we'd be able to get through this fog. Or better yet, that handheld GPS my brother sent me for Christmas last year. He got one of those ones that's integrated with the depthfinder for his boat, so he gave me his old one-"

"What? You have a compass and a Global Positioning System, and they're in a closet in your house, and you're telling me about this NOW?"

"In my desk drawer, actually, and I've never really needed them; I've never had to fish in absolute zero visibility."

That's when he started beating me with his hat. It was a baseball-style Grateful Dead cap, and the little metal button at the crown was starting to hurt when we both spotted land.

The fog had lifted just enough to show Cave Rock and Round Hill on the right, and Sugar Pine Point on the left. Picture us squinting for six minutes to come to this realization. We also determined that we were several miles northeast of the area we intended to fish, essentially lost in the middle of the lake, as we'd feared. West shore was still the closest, though, and after a half-hour at maximum speed, we ended up, three hours late, trolling a prime, rocky drop-off north of Emerald Bay. I felt invincible after surviving the fog and stumbling on the very area I wanted to fish, so I ran a #18, rainbow trout Rapala. This seven inch, floating plug is the stuff of local legend, catching giant brown trout and mackinaw. I have had mine for a year, running it frequently and catching nothing, but today felt different. The damn fog was still out, thick as ever, just slightly elevated, obscuring mountaintops and giving the day a melancholy overcast. We were casting distance from a sheer cliff shoreline, in water fifty feet deep, and I was staring intently at the tip of my rod, willing it to bend over.

When it did, I moved with reflexes I thought I had lost in high school, fat hand furiously cycling the handle of my Abu Garcia casting reel. The fish cooperated, running parallel with the boat while Brad steered us further offshore; when I had retrieved most of my line, it was right at our bow, and as I pulled it came completely out of the water. The three-and-a-half pound mackinaw actually leaped and smashed its head on the aluminum lip of my friend's V-hull, then flopped into the lake, stunned or dead.

"Keeper!" Brad remarked as he ignored the net I was now holding, reaching down and stuffing his fingers under the gill-plate of the heavily bleeding fish. He ripped the lure free and tossed the mack at my feet. We continued to troll plugs south, past the mouth of Emerald Bay, without further incident, so we stopped to re-rig with flashers and minnows, turning around to fish the same area again. As we passed Eagle Point (complete with bald eagle, perched motionless and sullen at the top of a dead tree), the bottom quickly dropped away, beyond the limit of my sonar, then came back up just as steeply at the north end of the bay's entrance. As our flashers traveled over the same lip, Brad had a hit, on his silver Sep's Colorado blades and minnow. He quickly pumped in a smaller mackinaw, about two pounds, which he shook free from his hook, releasing it without removal from the water. A repeat troll of this drop-off gave Brad another hit, and he repeated the drill, releasing another mackinaw of the exact same size.

It was now past noon, and I was scheduled to work at three, so we headed back to El Dorado boat ramp, this time hugging the shoreline off Kiva and Baldwin beaches, since the fog was still heavy in patches over south shore, and we could not clearly make out our destination from across the lake. At home, I cleaned my fish and put new batteries in the GPS, reading the instructions for the first time.

Wednesday, 12/6/00, Dead Man's Point: Dead Man Fishing

The fog finally lifted on Tuesday, and the next morning I again launched my canoe at Cave Rock, in complete darkness save the brilliant stars, at an hour described by my wife as "totally idiotic". This is one of the biggest and most challenging Tahoe excursions of the year for me, though, and I wanted a serious head start on sunrise, to reach the point by first light. It takes close to an hour and a half on my trolling motor's top speed, using up one of my three huge deep-cycle batteries, to arrive at my destination.

As with much high sierra wild trout fishing, effort in getting up early, braving the cold, and traveling farther than others is rewarded here. I started traveling north at five a.m., a good two hours before late autumn sunrise. The Weather Channel report I watched at home while having breakfast had given a current temperature of 18 degrees Fahrenheit for the Tahoe valley, with conditions calm, and light winds predicted for the entire day. This was crucial, and I waited for the national outlook to see how the high pressure front was situated over my area. On the video display behind the balding announcer in his ill-fitting suit, the isobars (those concentric pressure-gradient lines that look like a topographical map) were spread out nice and far around the big "H", confirming what the local report said. Check it out sometime- the worse the storm or windy front in your region, the closer the isobar lines.

And why dwell on the weather? Because Tahoe kills. Last year a sheriff's deputy fell in and died of hypothermia. The year before two convicts escaped from a Nevada work crew, stealing a canoe from a nearby lakefront house, and one of them drowned in 10 feet of water. Some of the mackinaw guides run 40 foot, oceanworthy vessels, and I was screwing my Minn Kota trolling motor to the side of my 17 foot Coleman canoe. Do not try this at home is the phrase that came to mind, as did a mental list of the standard precautions I take. I'm a strong swimmer. I have my portable running lights for starting in the dark. I have the "world's loudest whistle" around my neck I'm wearing my life vest. In the zipped back pocket of my pants, I have a space blanket and a waterproof container with matches. I will stay within 100 yards of shore, where I can break into one of those million dollar trophy homes and activate a burglar alarm so I can recover in a nice, warm jail cell. I told myself I should cut it to 50 yards when I stuck my little flyfishing thermometer in the water and it came out reading 41 degrees.

I didn't cut it though, because the water was flat calm, and I did cut off a half mile of curving shoreline by heading directly to the lights of the next point, Logan's Shoals. The canoe was doing about 7 miles per hour at top speed. I turned on my flashlight to help pick my way through some exposed rocks off Logan's, then headed on to Glenbrook Bay and Dead Man's Point as the eastern sky began to glow. I chuckled thinking of how much I hated telling my wife the name of the area I'd be fishing. Why can't they call it "Point of the man who caught a lot of fish safely and came home when he said he would?"

The most bitter, bone-chilling part of a Sierra Nevada night is just before sunrise. Then, when the first indirect rays of light hit Tahoe's icy waters, an unpredictable wind is often the result, drawn in off bays and shallows as the sun, intensified by reflections off the lake, heats the air at the water's surface, causing it to rise, attempting a vacuum which draws in dense, cold air from surrounding bottomlands.

Glenbrook Bay is notorious for this morning draw, and I found myself attempting to cross, well offshore at dawn, just as the effect reached maximum. Breeze-whipped waves came at me from changing directions, not allowing me to choose one angle for safe tacking to the northern shoreline. The localized mist I had observed over the bay when I first approached was now being torn apart. Translucent, whitish columns were spiraling as if small tornadoes, then suddenly stopping and spreading out like smoke in bubbles of calm air.

In between each form was now a clear view of the Glenbrook mansions, where before there lay an obscuring shroud. The mist had congealed into tight rows of these vertical shapes, lined up like soldiers, yet each twisting with the vagaries of the gust that created it. When the flow that was buffeting my craft suddenly calmed, I saw the little whirlwinds go slack as well. I know it was some sort of hallucination, brought about by lack of sleep, strong coffee and too much time in a boat at night, looking at the stars, but the stalagmites of mist took on a ghostlike appearance, each complete with a grimacing face and writhing arms, and they began to whirl menacingly around the canoe. The wind from shore built up again, only rather than sweeping these animate vapors past me it only seemed to gather more, all around, and I began to perceive a low, whistling howl, combining the sound of bending and fluttering shoreline treetops with the splash of aimless whitecaps colliding in a shifting wind.

Just as I abandoned myself to fear, veering off course for the closest land, the sun burst over Shakespeare Rock. For a moment, I envisioned a massive battlefield, in which spears of light were shooting from the sky, impaling the howling wraiths on the water. Like vampires with souls, each form withered as if in agony, then rose upward, and while radiant solar warmth licked my face, I saw that all the mist had recombined well above the lake, forming a weak cloud which continued to ascend and dissipate. The breeze had again calmed, leaving only residual waves, chaotic in their direction, expending their energy against each other. I resumed my course toward Dead Man's Point and prepared to start trolling.

Pulling a deep diving, saltwater size Rebel Minnow, I passed the final house and dock at the northern curve of Glenbrook, then rounded the first jutting point of Dead Man's, which is really a series of rocky fingers extending into the lake. As I lost sight of the bay behind me, I entered a different world, where the water was again glass-calm, and the sun was not yet up, hidden as it would be for another two hours or so by the steep, tree-lined hills that climbed out of the rocks to my right.

I'd caught mackinaw off the point at dawn on several past trips, but this time my plug passed unmolested, and I began to lose confidence in the huge lure. Confidence is of course the key to success, and the jointed, clown pattern Rapala that has produced so well this year was calling out to me from my tackle box. Nothing is more reassuring when tying on a plug than to see a finish scratched with toothmarks from previous fish, and as I let out the Rapala on a 100 yard tether, then ran my canoe so tight to the jumble of shoreline boulders that my rod tip actually brushed one, I waited with baited breath. Literally, it turns out, because after smearing some Pro-Cure minnow oil onto the lure, I had accidentally touched my finger to my lip, and was now gagging and spitting into the water, trying to expel the putrid taste.

Apparently sensing my distraction, a fish struck my lure hard, bending the spinning rod deeply in its holder and activating my lightly set drag. Still spitting, I went into action, grabbing the rod and working the fish halfway in before a spectacular leap showed me that my opponent was a rainbow trout. As the shower of spray it threw up settled back into the center of a growing circle of ripples, the fish was already many yards away, heading west, out into the lake. This is much preferable to a fight among the jagged rocks, so I steered my canoe with my elbow, going further offshore to meet it in open water. Here its furious zig-zag runs and another half-hearted leap failed to dislodge my hook, and I was able to reach down and net it relatively quickly.

Nineteen inches or so, the trout was bright silver, with very little spotting and just a hint of metallic violet on its gill-cover. Only a single treble point was lodged in its upper jaw, and I easily pulled the hook free with needle-nose pliers. Then I wet my hands in the icy water, lifted the fish up, admiring it for a moment, and said "Thank you, Tahoe" aloud as it squirted like a bar of soap out of my grip and back into the lake.

Winds remained calm, the water a mirror, and I fished for several more hours without another bite. I went to deeper running lures, then dodgers and minnows, and even a Flatfish 100 feet deep off my downrigger, before returning to the old standby, floating plugs. It was close to noon now, and I stripped down to my T-shirt and fleece vest in the brilliant sunlight. I had reversed course and was now back where I started fishing, rounding Dead Man's and swinging in toward Glenbrook. At this point, I was beginning to question my decision to release my one fish, as I did not relish the prospect of returning home to the wife empty-handed. As it so often does, Lake Tahoe then seemed to read my very thoughts, and my rod tip twitched, then slowly bowed over. I first thought that I had snagged a nearby buoy with my rainbow trout pattern Berkeley Frenzy plug, but when I turned off my motor, and the rapid clicking of my drag did not decrease at all, I realized that I was into a good fish. This one, like the earlier rainbow, headed away from shore, but stayed deep, and before I even glimpsed it, I knew by its steady, bulldog fight that it was a mackinaw. Several minutes later, five pounds of squirming, thrashing lake trout lay on the floor of the canoe, sliming my boots.

Only then, the adrenaline subsiding and my mission accomplished, did I feel the ache in my lower back and knot of hunger pangs in my stomach telling me to head for home. I know it's only fishing, but in the intensity of the moment, when I am fully engaged with a trout, and surrounded by snowcapped peaks on a lake so beautiful that the paltry words of myself and a thousand other writers could never do it justice, it becomes something much greater, the very essence of my existence.

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