Santee Lakes - Operation Steelhead (11/4)

[Latimeria]

I ran down for two hours before my scheduled meetings with some recruiters looking to get my Stocker Steelhead and maybe a trophy Lightning Trout.

I decided to just throw the spoon that got hit yesterday a few times, but I modified it.  I added an extra split ring to extend the hook back another 1/4" for those small tail biters.  I saw a bunch of trout this morning on my walk, but nothing really wanted it.  I had two Lightning Trout swimming back and forth and I casted a bunch of times to them.  One was a pretty big female, and the other was a smaller hook jaw male.  Finally, I got the bigger one to take it and it took off like a bullet!  I had the drag pretty tight to begin with and after a 3- or 4-minute tussle, it popped off. Ugh.... one of the hooks were at a 90-degree angle so I fixed it with the pliers.  I know this hook isn't going to hold up at this point to any real ones.

I was planning on checking out multiple lakes, but I couldn't leave this area with all of the trout around.
I kept casting in front of the smaller male lightning and finally hooked him!  Well, with a single run, the hooked popped out.  How infuriating...

I continued to cast to trout swimming by with no luck and then noticed a loose wrap on my spool.  I gave it a long cast to try and get the line tight on my reel when I thought I hooked into weeds... until it started running!  Holy hell, I'll take it!

It was a good fight, and I reeled up a fairly decent Hybrid Steelie!



More people started showing up and my time was coming to a close.  I kept walking around the lake and came across 4 trout that wanted nothing to do with me.  I would have kept trying, but my time was up and I needed to get back to talk to the recruiters.

After a good talk with the recruiters, I realized he failed to mention where these jobs were located.... Needless to say, I'm not commuting to LA.  lol

Well, back to the drawing boards!

[Tim524]

You will catch all that was planted in no time at all