08-04-2013, 04:16 PM
Neldon and I decided to give Strawberry a try yesterday. Neldon hadn’t fished Strawberry yet this year and I needed to redeem myself for a poor showing a week earlier. Both of us accomplished our goals.
With the lower water levels and higher than normal temperatures, the fish, at Strawberry, don’t seem to be in their typical locations this time of year. We tried many of the usual good fishing areas, around Strawberry Bay, and found few fish. There also didn’t seem to be a concentration of boats anywhere either and the small concentration of boats that we checked out didn’t seem to be catching any fish.
Decided to try a location that has always rewarded me with at least a few fish and it came through again. We both immediately hooked up and caught our one and only doubles of the day. I was fortunate that my fish was this 25”+ fat cutthroat:
[inline "Strawberry 25 incher.jpg"]
At 10:45 AM, someone flipped the switch and the previous calm immediately, and I do mean immediately, turned to a steady wind for the remainder of the time we fished (got off the water around 6:30 PM). The i-Pilot tried it’s best to hold us in our location and did a great job of doing so until the batteries ran down about 2 hours later.
I decided to try drift trolling, so we fired up the outboard and headed for the far shoreline. I needed more weight to get my jig down deeper, so Neldon was kind enough to show me how to tie a Surgeon’s Knot and I tied on three heavier jigs. Before I even got them in the water I managed to get them so tangled that I gave up trying to untangle them and just cut them off and started over again. Headed for a different far shoreline and tried drift trolling again. The heavier weight worked and I caught my first fish while fishing with three hooks. I decided to anchor up at another location that has also always been good for at least a few fish. I did well there but poor Neldon lost one fish and got few bites at this location. I found that vertically jigging with the three jigs on the same line worked much better than I expected that it would.
I took the water temperature with the fancy thermometer, that I bought from TubeDude a few years ago. Surface temperature was 70 degrees and at 40 feet it was 57 degrees.
Nearly all of the fish were caught either vertically jigging or casting and bouncing the jig back to the boat.
[signature]
With the lower water levels and higher than normal temperatures, the fish, at Strawberry, don’t seem to be in their typical locations this time of year. We tried many of the usual good fishing areas, around Strawberry Bay, and found few fish. There also didn’t seem to be a concentration of boats anywhere either and the small concentration of boats that we checked out didn’t seem to be catching any fish.
Decided to try a location that has always rewarded me with at least a few fish and it came through again. We both immediately hooked up and caught our one and only doubles of the day. I was fortunate that my fish was this 25”+ fat cutthroat:
[inline "Strawberry 25 incher.jpg"]
At 10:45 AM, someone flipped the switch and the previous calm immediately, and I do mean immediately, turned to a steady wind for the remainder of the time we fished (got off the water around 6:30 PM). The i-Pilot tried it’s best to hold us in our location and did a great job of doing so until the batteries ran down about 2 hours later.
I decided to try drift trolling, so we fired up the outboard and headed for the far shoreline. I needed more weight to get my jig down deeper, so Neldon was kind enough to show me how to tie a Surgeon’s Knot and I tied on three heavier jigs. Before I even got them in the water I managed to get them so tangled that I gave up trying to untangle them and just cut them off and started over again. Headed for a different far shoreline and tried drift trolling again. The heavier weight worked and I caught my first fish while fishing with three hooks. I decided to anchor up at another location that has also always been good for at least a few fish. I did well there but poor Neldon lost one fish and got few bites at this location. I found that vertically jigging with the three jigs on the same line worked much better than I expected that it would.
I took the water temperature with the fancy thermometer, that I bought from TubeDude a few years ago. Surface temperature was 70 degrees and at 40 feet it was 57 degrees.
Nearly all of the fish were caught either vertically jigging or casting and bouncing the jig back to the boat.
[signature]
