1/17/13 Lake Berryessa’s Rainbow Trout
Despite all the reports that Berryessa was slow, I figured, I would go see if anything has changed. When I left Grass Valley at 6:00 AM it was 33 degrees and when I got to Markley Cove it was 28. We launched on the icy ramp and headed over towards Spanish Flat. We spotted a bunch of birds working so decided to start in the middle of them. We put a Shad 4′ behind a Shark Cannonball and down 25’ and another at 30. We also ran two baits about 100’ behind the boat and one down 6’ and one down 10’. It took less than five minutes before we had a fish on the 25’ downrigger but quickly lost him. Within a minute or two we hooked and landed a very nice rainbow on the 6’ line. This action kept going for about two hours before it quit. It was like someone turned a switch off. We couldn’t buy a fish after that. The birds quit feeding as well. We then moved over to the area just outside of the Dam and targeted Kings. We fished Shad and Anchovies for about an hour before calling it a day. We ended the day with about 10 hookups landing seven of them. All these rainbows were very nice two pound plus fish and all caught on Pautzke Blue Fire Brined Shad. The water surface temp was 48 when we launched and was just below 50 when we pulled out at 2:00 PM. The bite should only get better as the water warms.