Strawberry 8/6/05

[Kent]

Fished Strawberry today with PrinceFisher and wiperslayer1. Tried vertical jigging and caught some, but not the large numbers that we were hoping for. Finished up trolling, and we did fairly well trolling (once we caught triples).

Here is one that PrinceFisher was especially proud of:

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Fun day of fishing and great company.
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[Bigfishrule]

Kent

Trolling was the ticket today for us too. Did you catch any over the slot?
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[Kent]

Several were really close to being over the slot, but I don't think any made it. My best lure (if you want to call it a lure) was a whole crawler, put on with a worm threader on a rebarb hook (the entire curved portion of the hook was exposed) attached to the downrigger without anything else (no popgear and no dodger). Rigging this way every cutt was hooked nicely in the corner of its mouth. I also hooked three fish on a second lure run down my fishing line (tied a short piece of leader to a snap swivel and run it down my fishing line after my line was down with the downrigger).
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[Theekillerbee]

Hey Kent, that fish is sweet! At least you can say you caught something that was outside of the slot![] Either way, sounds like a fun trip. Did you guys launch from the berry side?
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[Kent]

Yep it was definitely outside of the slot. Saw a couple being checked at the cleaning station as we left, and it looked like they had two full limits of cutts. I heard the game warden say after measuring one fish that it was 18 inches long. I'm sure that they are facing a hefty fine. Yes, we launched from The Strawberry Marina.
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[Bigfishrule]

When are people going to learn. I had a guy at work last week telling me he had brought home a limit of cutts from the berry. said they were all real big. When I asked him how long they were he told me 19 to 21 inches. When I told him those were in the slot, his reply was what slot. So Inline we go to the dwr page. He said he had'nt looked at a proclamation in years. Just asked the lady selling him the license what the limit was. He at least seemed to understand and said he would not do it again. I explained that Strawberry is the one place that I always see dwr officers checking fish.
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[wiperhunter2]

It sure is amasing how many people never check the proclamation. As far as I'm concerned those are the people that hurt the fishery but the DWR can't check them all. Thanks for giving the guy the update on the rule book. WH2
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[PrinceFisher]

I really had a great day with Kent and Ira (Wiperslayer1). I learned a bit about downrigging and trolling that I didn't know before, and it was certainly fun to catch a few big cutts while vertical jigging with tubes.

Regarding the photo, Kent said it was the smallest fish he'd ever seen caught at Strawberry. That's about par for the course when it comes to the size of fish I usually catch.[]

Big fish, little fish--doesn't matter--when one is fishing with hospitable folks that are some skilled fishermen to boot, it's always a memorable and enjoyable day.
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