Tom Tan, my uncle told me on the way up to the lake that he hadn’t fished it in 20 years and remembers catching tiny stripers on anchovies off the bank. I told him today, we are not doing that. We had a great day together–my uncle is a retired postal carrier and one of my favorite relatives. We caught them on Topwater lures (Sammys), rattletraps, and Flies– For him an EPIC day in the life as we achieved our goal of catching big stripers with different techniques. I can’t remember when I fished with Tom last. I think it was the Truckee River in the 70s but I know he loves fishing. The lake was kind to us with 10 fish before we managed 4 keepers before 11AM. This morning we arrived at 6:30. It was dark and there were a dozen boats in line to inspect and launch. It was a zoo with three boats across the ramp launching at the same time. We had to thread the needle but we got out before anyone else. After a little misfiring on the outboard (not sure why). We made a hole shot to Lone Oak Bay hoping to fish topwater for a couple hours before the sun popped over the hills. We got one fish on topwater after two missed boils and Tom hooked a 7 pounder on a rattletrap casting to my hooked topwater fish. When the flies and lures stopped working, we trolled the shoreline with flies and picked up some keepers. Around 10:30 the wind started to get harder at 14 mph. The outboard started to sputter and misfire so I decided to troll back to the Dock. Around the corner from the dock we crossed a point that went from 30 ft to 15 ft deep and Tom , with his drag almost full on, hooked something that tore line out of my sage fly reel like bullet train line burning Tom’s finger.. I watched the tip and it stood frozen in the air as I took the outboard out of gear. Earlier in the week a friend of mine lost an expensive fly line because we pulled on it before we had gotten the fly line in the reel loosing the line at the backing knot. I turned the boat around and headed for the fly line and noticed that Tom couldn’t reel line fast enough to take the slack out of the line as we approached what we thought was a snag. I grabbed the rod from Tom and started reeling as fast as possible to get the slack out of the sinking line so we wouldn’t double snag. when we got over the snag, I held the reel tight and pulled feeling a pop like the fly let go. But then to my surprise, the line started to move and I felt the surge of a large fish. After battling the 2 foot rollers rocking the boat , we netted an 8 lbr. At the ramp we cleaned fish with three other boats and I have to say we had the biggest and most fish. We were also the only fishermen on the lake not using live bait. Lucky today! We had lunch at Marie Calendar’s in Gilroy on the way home to end a great morning. I better change the oil and clean the spark plugs on the outboard this week.
