Change - American Lake

[Lee]

Haven't talked to him since yesterday evening.  They were starting their float at 6 or 6:30 this morning, and doing the 13.5 miles, they are probably still out there.

[SwiftDraw]

Nice fish!!
At what depth do you get it? Down Rigger?

SD

[Lee]

Trolling some flashers followed by a vibrax blue fox in about 10-15 foot of water.  No downrigger.

[cobrakak76]

WOW dude right on!    Looks like I might be headed out there on Saturday.

Brian

[Zee]

Dude! A steelie limit and now a banger 'bow?? Buy a lottery ticket!!! Congrats man.

Z

[Lee]

I've been buying lotto tickets for about a year now.  No dice.

[ConeHeadMuddler]

Dang it! I just typed out a report on our float, and hit the wrong button and lost it. Couldn't find this thread last night, due to the sneaky title change, and the fact that I was dog-tired from being on the river from dawn til dusk. So y'all lucked out! This one is only a little shorter, so you didn't luck out that much!

Very nice trout Lee. You made the right choice. It was nippy on the river.

The fish weren't nippy, though. We only heard of two fish caught all day, from several boats and bank anglers. One was C&R'd by our friends in the other drift boat, a large beautiful colored-up hatchery buck. Those guys catch so many steelhead, they only keep the fresh chrome hatchery swags for the table.  All of us release all of our wild steelhead, if we are lucky enough to encounter one. Even in the ten rivers where anglers are allowed to retain their "one per year." Its so sad to see the runs diminishing year after year, and know that some anglers don't care but still insist on keeping them.

I saw enough sweepers, rootwads, and strainers in the center of the main current to dissuade me from wanting to take my yak down that river for fishing purposes. You just can't beat a driftboat (of raft or pontoon....something with OARS!!!) for running a swift river and fishing out of.

We had a fun float. I learned the best techniques for employing braided line for jig-and-float fishing, from a couple of experts. (We floated alongside another boat with some friends of my buddy's who are well-schooled steelhead fanatics...that's all they do!!!). I am now a convert to using the spectra braid!

My buddy had printed out a huge stack of photos (Google Earth) for the entire section of river we floated, and he made detailed notes on each one, especially the better looking water. Great stuff for near-future reference, although some of his intelligence collecting will be rendered to oblivion by the next blowout monsoon event.

 

[Lee]

My T-160 wouldn't allow me to fish, I'd be fighting the river the whole time.  My other yak works great though.  It's basically a whitewater raft when you look at how it's made.

It came with an extra floor mat, and I'm going to double up and see if it works at keeping me dry  (what I really mean here is WARM!)

This is the latest version of what I have, pretty much just cosmetic updates from when I bought mine 3-4 years ago.

http://www.sportsauthority.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3614211&CAWELAID=352537746

[ConeHeadMuddler]

That thing in your link actually looks pretty well designed for rivers. I imagined trying that stretch in my Tarpon, and I said "NOPE!"  (By the way, Whitebridge to Black Crk is 11.2 river miles. The run upstream of that one, 7400 bridge to Whitebridge is 13.5 miles.  And its about 2.5+ miles from Whitebridge to Crossover Bridge. We sometimes do the 8.5+ mile shorter run from Crossover to Black Crk.

 You might have been cold yesterday, Lee. The sun eventually came out from behind the clouds and we felt some warming rays, but the light upriver breeze had me keeping my windbreaker on over two layers of fleece and a capilene thermal top. I had the capilene longjohns and fleece wader pants under my breathables.

We saw some tough gnarly middle-aged dude fishing from the bank in the cool upriver breeze wearing jeans, hip boots, and only a T-shirt. He said, "It's colder than yesterday!" But he was grinning and toughing it out!