Friday January 8, 2021 – The first work week of the year flew by for me in anticipation of fishing the lake this weekend.   Even though the reports as of yesterday suggested I should go to the Forebay instead,   I decided to see if I could go back a week later and duplicate my success last week fishing the rocks on the dam and the trash racks.     I arrived to a clear perfect day at 9:00am.     There were very few boats out which can be great if you dont like crowds, but when the regulars are not fishing,  sometimes that’s a hint that it might be better to stay in that warm bed in the morning than to put three layers of clothes on, 9mm nitrile gloves and full head and face covering just to stay a little warm.  The fog rolled in late at around 10:00 am and with no sun, it got really cold.    I started the BOP to Racks run first thing in the morning and  hooked 5 fish landing three fish on the way to the racks.    It looked like it might be just like last week.  When I got to the racks,  the Dam Police showed up and the 4 boats bait fishing close in,  pulled back out.   I decided to  continue to fish the face of the dam on the Romero side of the racks and hooked a good fish at the causeway  the fish hit a fly that was sitting on the bottom and I didnt hook it well.   It didn’t fight that much either and as I got it almost to the boat,  the fish shook the fly.  Instead of speeding off,  it just hovered there next to the boat for a couple minutes.   I grabbed my camera and took a couple shots of it in the water next to the boat.   Very Strange.  Maybe it was too cold to swim away.   I threw a fly back at it and to my surprise, the fish swam slowly toward it.       I didn’t hook it again and it gradually swam away.    I also caught  an American Shad today.   It didn’t fight either which surprised me.  I ended the day trying to catch a couple fish at the trash racks.   I could see stripers everywhere on the sonar and all the other boats were gone by 2:00 in the afternoon.     I fished for a couple hours around the racks trying everything and couldn’t get those fish to eat.   I think I’ll take Don to the forebay on Sunday to see if those fish are more active.    I ended the day hooking 8 fish and landing 5.   The soft bite can be tough to feel  and when they are like that,  I sometimes hook them very light.

I seem to be doing better with unweighted craft fur flies.  I used a  small yellow and white craft fur minnow with a pulse disc like I did  last week.   This fly has lots of micro action on the drop and on the pause.   I did not try Crawdad flies today.

Earlier in the morning,  I tried to catch those BOP fish around the brush with a drop shot rig that Ken Oda suggested might get them to eat.   You can see on the sonar the rig drop down right in front of a bunch of fish.   The fish swim seemed interested but wouldn’t commit.   It was fun trying to catch those fish looking only at the Panoptix Livescope.