By James “Big Ed” Everhart
May 26-27, 2016
Water Temp 41-43
Air Temp 42-61
Cloudy on Thursday
Clear on Friday and breezy
This Past Thursday and Friday I took my dad to a new lake for the both of us. I’ve fished in lakes all around this one in my 30 years of fishing the area but for some reason this one never made the list. This wasn’t going to be a trolling trip it was just a break out the chair and sit on the shore day. Thursday we arrived at the lake around 10 am the report on the DFG site said they were going to plant the lake the week of the 22nd so the first thought I had was Powerbait but just for sure measures we stopped and picked up some nightcrawlers. Upper Salmon Lake is a 41 acre lake sitting at 6500′ elevation in Sierra county above Sierra City, it is also like most of the lakes in the area absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. There is a small dock that is owned by the lodge on the far side of the lake they do allow you to fish from it. The boat ramp is immediately adjacent to the dock, this is where the fish plants take place.
On Thursday I started out with Rainbow Garlic Powerbait on one rod and a nightcrawler on the other. My setup for both was a Carolina rig style with a quarter ounce weight, for the Powerbait
Native Brook trout
I was using a number 16 treble hook and for the worm a number 8 bait hook. The lake has a shallow rim then a drop off I was casting approximately 30 yards out it appeared to be close to twenty feet deep. It only took about twenty minutes to get my first bite but I did not get the hook set, it was on the nightcrawler rig. The trout caught on Thursday were all Brook Trout and all were caught on the nightcrawler rig, ended up catching two fish and had four bites all day. We had to leave the lake at 1pm for some appointments but decided that it was not enough so we would return on Friday.
750 lbs of meat.
Friday we arrived at the lake around the same time as Thursday but this time I was more focused on the nightcrawler rig, unfortunately the fish just weren’t biting as well as they were on the previous day. We fished for about two hours without a bite, the weather had changed with the clouds of yesterday being replaced with clear skies and a bit of a breeze. At 1 pm the fishing would get a lot easier as the DFG planting truck would pull up and drop 750 pounds of fish in the lake. A real fishing report is probably not needed at this point since planted trout are not the hardest fish to catch but there are a couple of tricks I can give you that seemed to help me get fish when others were not. I started by switching back to powerbait but I used an additive to my bait that seemed to get more bites its called Lip Ripperz hatchery dust . I’m not sponsored by them or anything just find that it gets more bites when I’m dealing with planted trout. The other tip I had was that a gold bladed spinners with either yellow or black bodies were getting bit 6 to 1 over a Kastmaster, I was using a Mepps spinner. As the fish get more established in the lake they will of course become more difficult to catch so hopefully this report will help you narrow down your options and get you some fish.
Dad And I with limits on Friday.
See you on the water,
Big Ed
