Anglers Battle Trout at New Melones, Amador and Camanche Lakes
ANGELS CAMP — The Mother Lode is shaping up as the place for anglers to go in search of quality trout this autumn. Trout are now biting at New Melones, Amador and Camanche lakes as the water temperature cools down.
Monte Smith of Gold Country Sportfishing reported solid trolling for rainbow trout on his latest two trips to New Melones Lake on the Stanislaus River.
“When you have two great veterans out on the water on Veterans Day, you got to produce, but when there are ten other boats pounding away at the fish in an area, I leave to find my own fish, and that’s exactly what I did,” said Smith.
“It wasn’t a great bite, but we ended the day with six rainbows and we lost a big one that we never saw, probably a brown trout. It was a beautiful warm, sunny fall day with two great guys enjoying their time together and I’m glad I was a part of it,” said Smith.
The two veterans, Dan Bledsaw and Bob Reeves of Tracy, caught six holdover rainbows ranging from 1-1/2 to 3 pounds.
“The fish were holding at 45 to 65 feet,” said Smith. “We hooked all of the fish on my custom spoons. The surface water temperature was 61 to 62 degrees.”
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On his previous trip to New Melones, the two anglers fishing with him, Tom and Karen Tobin of Knights Landing landed their limits of rainbows. All ten fish that they kept were holdovers in the 1-1/2 to 3 lb. range except for one 12-inch planter. They also lost five fish.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife planted a double load of rainbows at New Melones recently, so bank fishing for trout should be picking up in the Glory Hole Point and Tuttletown areas, according to Smith. Anglers should toss out nightcrawlers, PowerBait, spoons, jigs and other offerings for the trout.
Smith hasn’t been to Don Pedro in the last couple of weeks, but the fishing should improve there soon for both rainbow trout and king salmon as the water temperature cools and the lake turns over.
Every time you fish at New Melones you have a chance of catching a trophy brown trout. Just ask Bobby Aperoch of Yuba City, who was fishing from a kayak at the lake on Jan. 26, 2022, when he tied the New Melones Lake brown trout lake record of 13.4 pounds.
Aperoch was fishing for crappie with a Notorious Jig on 6 lb. test line near the Glory Hole boat ramp at 50 feet deep when the big brown hit. Aperoch’s fish tied the 13-pound, 4-ounce German brown caught by Michael Oliveira of Hilmar on Dec. 30, 2011.
Lake Amador: The lake management on Nov. 8 released 700 pounds of Cutbows in the lake, so “there should be a swarm of hungry trout all over the front part of the lake,” said Lee Lockhart of the Lake Amador Resort.
“With the drop in temperatures over the last week the surface is cooling fast, so expect to find many of these fish in the top 10’ now or very soon,” he said. “There’s some big ones in this load, so make sure your drag is set correctly.”
Then on Friday, the lake staff planted the lake with a 300-pound load of trophy Amabows, said Lockhart.
“Most of these fish were in the 8-14 lb class. The fish were a mixture of Cutbows, Blues, and one tank of a Gold,” he said. “With Wednesday’s release, that makes 1000 lbs. total or the week released at the dam.”
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Big fish honors go to Chris Spears, who bagged a 7.5 lb Cutbow while using nightcrawlers near the boat docks.
The water level is 23 feet down and the surface water temperature is 65 degrees. The water clarity is 8’ and the oxygen level is 8.8mg/L.
Lake Camanche: The Camanche Recreation Company is also planting trout now. On Nov. 10 they stocked 1,000 lbs. of Mt. Lassen rainbows at the South Shore Pond, 1,000 pounds at the North Shore Ramp and 1,000 pounds at the South Shore Ramp, a total of 3,000 pounds.
That was the second trout plant of the season. The first plant on Nov. 1 also consisted of 3,000 pounds of rainbows, split equally between the South Shore Pond, South Shore Ramp and North Shore Ramp.
West Delta/Suisun Bay Stripers: After a slowdown the fishing for a few weeks, the striped bass action has rebounded on the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
“The fishing has perked back up,” said Jeff Soo Hoo of Soo Hoo Sportfishing. “On Saturday, November 11, we ended up with six limits of stripers, along with releasing shakers and keepers while trolling deep-diving Yo-Zuris in chartreuse and pink and drifting mudsuckers and bluegill. We went up the San Joaquin River about three miles, then fished the West Bank of the Sacramento and Broad Slough.”
“Then on Sunday we looked for a better grade of fish and headed to Suisun Bay,” he noted. “We caught six limits of stripers in the 4 to 10 lb. range. We were seeing stripers all over the place.”
Crab/Rockfish Combos: The top-notch rockfish and crab fishing continues outside of the Golden Gate.
“We saw lots of big crab and rockfish today with beautiful weather,” said Captain James Smith of California Dawn Sportfishing in Berkeley on Nov. 12. “The combined score for the California Dawn 1 and 2 was 51 limits of rockfish (510), 51 limits of Dungeness Crab (510) and 5 lingcod.”
The Lovely Martha out of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco ran a crab-only trip on Sunday and made quick work of it, finishing up with 18 limits (180) of crab.
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Anglers Battle Trout at New Melones, Amador and Camanche Lakes
