I'm often asked why I keep my canoe on the roof of my truck in winter, and when I reply that I fish Lake Tahoe in this weather, raised eyebrows ensue. I admit I must be missing a few lures in my tackle box to risk death by drowning and hypothermia, but I really don't mind sitting in the cold, as long as the fishing is good.

Still, even cheap, hot-blooded cavemen have their primeval limits, and when I checked the internet for conditions in South Lake Tahoe at 5:30 a.m. on December fifteenth, I saw a current temperature of two-degrees Fahrenheit, with a five-mile-per hour breeze making for wind chill of minus-one. Yikes! The morning bite is best on Tahoe, but light winds and a high of twenty-eight were predicted for the day, so I slept until the luxuriously late hour of seven-thirty, then ate breakfast and read the paper, waiting for the mercury to inch up with the morning sun. My next check of weather.com showed a balmy eight-degrees and no wind at all, so I layered up in fleece underpants, Gore-Tex pants, fleece socks, wool socks, waterproof insulated boots, polypropylene undershirt, down vest, fleece pullover, Gore-Tex shell, balaclava, and ski gloves; I know I should really be wearing a scuba-diver's dry suit, but this puffy ensemble serves me well as long as I don't go for a swim.

When I leave the house before dawn to go fishing I'm always racing the clock to make it on the water for sunrise, but on this day I found myself driving below the speed limit then dawdling at the Sand Harbor boat ramp, chatting with tourists who stopped to take photographs of the lake as I waited for the air to warm another degree or two. The tourists told me it was not safe to take a canoe out in these temperatures.

By late morning I had all my gear loaded and could stall no longer, so I pushed off from the ramp and turned on my electric trolling motor, steering south and traveling toward a nearby point where I often hook rainbows and mackinaw. My initial strategy was to slow-troll a dodger and minnow on one rod, and a set of flashers trailing a night crawler on the other. These offerings were presented on a long line, one-hundred yards of monofilament, without additional weight. Trolled in this way, the metal lures will run around twenty feet deep; knowing this I watched my Fishin' Buddy sonar unit to monitor depth and zig-zagged the canoe to stay over twenty-five to thirty-five feet of water.

Ten minutes of trolling brought me to a drop-off, where the rocky bottom descended quickly to eighty feet beneath the canoe. When I estimated that my lures were traveling over the same drop, I turned off my motor and let them sink down the hill. After ten interminable seconds, I started forward again then watched my ultra light steelhead spinning rod bend over hard.

The mackinaw are up! Also known as lake trout, these fish have been the dominant species since their introduction to Tahoe over one-hundred years ago. They prefer colder water than the brown and rainbow trout that also live here, so they are found deeper for much of the year. In winter, I often read fishing reports in my local newspaper that describe the mackinaw as going especially deep, with some charter captains fishing at 250 feet to catch them. I thought about this while netting a five-pound mack hooked near the surface. A few minutes later I caught another, nearly identical fish on the mighty night crawler.

There are many rules in fishing- from the local (keep no more than two mackinaw on Tahoe) to the obvious (you can't catch fish without a hook in the water) to ridiculous myths, like 'never bring bananas on a fishing boat' or 'hold your mouth right'. Ask any old salt and he'll tell you he's heard both these sayings; I think the 'hold your mouth' means shut up and listen. As for bananas, I had two on board for a snack and they never slowed me down when I went on to catch seven more mackinaw before sunset.

Another adage is that you never leave fish to find fish, but after half an hour without another bite, I adhered to what for me has always been an important guideline- follow your hunches. Judging by my first two macks and a surface temperature close to forty-five degrees, I figured I would continue to find aggressive lake trout, but decided to look for them just a bit deeper by trolling with lead core line from forty to eighty feet down. This switch kept me on fish; the smallest was over three pounds, and the largest was twenty-eight inches long and weighed eight pounds. Minnows trolled behind silver attractor blades (a Luhr-Jensen Bolo Troll and an Abe and Al flasher) caught all these fish, and they all fought hard, keeping me from noticing the cold as I brought them in gently on eight-pound leader. I also lost a bigger one that slammed a T-55 Flatfish plug and ran hard, peeling several colors of lead core off my reel before throwing the hook. I don't catch a lot of mackinaw on this huge lure, but the ones that have the nerve to bite it are invariably bruisers. I kept the first fish and the last one, cooking one for dinner and freezing the other for my family's traditional Christmas Eve seafood feast.

You can certainly troll or jig deeper water and catch fish on Tahoe right now, but why would you want to? Not only is it simpler and more fun to fish shallow, but the average size of the mackinaw I catch this way tends to be larger than those caught deep, and there's always the possibility of hooking a big rainbow or brown trout using the same techniques. As a matter of fact, I thought I was fishing for rainbows, but when I found mackinaw instead I was more than happy to change plans. Check the weather for a nice high-pressure day between storms, bundle up and get out there, because ice-cold fishing is red-hot!

Recipe- Christmas Eve Mackinaw: gut your fish and scrape out the blood line along its backbone. Also make sure to pull out all the fat surrounding the organs. This layer is unique to these cold-adapted salmonids, insulating them against near-freezing water. Cut off head, gills and fins, then remove the skin. I'm not kidding- just dig your fingers between the meat and skin at the top of the back where you cut off the head, separating the skin from the meat (you can use a small knife to start this separation if needed), then with your fingers or a pair of pliers simply strip the skin away like you're peeling a banana, all the way to the tail. It's easier than it sounds, and now you can slather my secret marinade directly on the meat.

Honey, spicy brown mustard and lime juice are all you need, mixed together in equal parts and spread on both sides and in the body cavity of your trout. Bake, broil or barbecue, turning once and adding more marinade as needed. Simple yet delicious, try this recipe on someone who thinks mackinaw is too 'fishy' and watch them eat their words.

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