Davis Lake Rainbows

Davis Lake is where were fishing today.  But first, as we were traveling on Hwy 89 out of Truckee we soon learned the highway was a solid ice. After a little thrill with the truck and boat going sideways we decided to slow down and take our time. We arrived at the Honker Cove parking lot, I knew it was not going to an easy launch. We found about 3 inches of snow with solid ice under it. Knowing, I was going to need chains to get up the ramp, I decided to install them in the upper parking lot rather than on the ramp. As I was installing the chains I asked my son-in-law to walk down and check the ramp. Upon returning, he told me, “the whole cove was solid ice”. I was even more disappointed and broke the news to our clients. We decided to run over to Mallards Cove and check that ramp. We found a lot less snow and open water at the ramp. With chains still installed we were able to get the boat in the water without much of a problem.

We started trolling straight out in front of the ramp and headed towards the big island. About half hour without a hit, I was wondering if it was just going to be one of those days. Once we got into a little deeper water I started marking fish just off the bottom at 30 feet. The water temperature was 37 degrees on the surface so I dropped a probe to see what the temperature was at 30 feet. The result was 38 degrees at 30 feet of water, one degree difference is a all. I started targeting the fish on the bottom using the downriggers and in no time we were hooked up. Our clients today were Tom Gore of Healdsburg and Geoff Eisenberg of San Francisco who landed his first fish ever, a nice 16 inch rainbow. I was glad we were using our new Lamiglas kokanee rods with P-Line 6 lb. CXX, it made that 16 inch fish feel much bigger then it was. From that point on we put 15 nice rainbows in the boat in two and a half hours. We used several different lures such as a Shasta Tackle Red/Gold Humdingers and Needlefish but they seemed to want the smallest Dick Night spoon in Copper/Pink slathered with Pro-Cure Garlic Plus. The weather ran the gamut today from sun to snow flurries. After learning this was Geoff first fish ever and we ended up with limits of nice rainbows, it made all the extra effort getting the boat in the water well worth it.

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