Santee Lakes - Soaking in the Rain (11/15)

[Latimeria]

I spent Friday recovering from sore muscles all day from the Thursday Evening bug trip.  I saw some good rain for Saturday and knew they stocked the ponds on Thursday, so perfect timing!

I didn't get out at the opening today, but made it down before 7:30.  the lake in which they stocked was PACKED!  First of all, that was a lot of people for a normal weekend, let alone really rainy day! 

I moved on to Lake 3 and it looked like a pond full of YooHoo...

I moved to Lake 4 and it was the cleanest of the ponds, but there were people fishing in all of the spots that I wanted to fish.  I walked the shore and saw nothing so I moved on.

I finally just decided to just set out a few rods since the rain started to drizzle a little bit harder and the radar was showing some heavy stuff arriving soon.



I go to my truck and look back to see my 2# rod doubled over and saw a huge splash!  Holy crap I'm on a big one!
It definitely wasn't a cat and I was stoked to see the size of this trout since the splash I saw/heard was pretty damn big!

WTF?!?!?!?  Not a trout, but a husky 3+# bass!  Well, on 2# test, that was a bad ass fight!



I went back to the truck after releasing him and threw on my rain jacket since it started to pour.  I turned around to see my tiny rod doubled over and the SI pinned to the eye!

It wasn't too big at all, but even on this micro rod, I knew it was a catfish, and a pretty small one to boot.



I had to retie this leader since he swallowed the hook and as I finished tying the rig, I saw the other rod doubled over and knew it definitely was a much bigger model.  It fought much different than a channel as it stayed at the surface quite a bit and I realized why.  Nice Blue!



It then was instantaneous bites back to back to back... All of the fish were in a 20 square yard spot and bit the minute you cast at it.  Next two were nice Channels...





Followed by another blue!



Then it just got stupid.  I think I caught 9 total cats and 1 bass.  Some of the cats were small and it was raining hard, so I just flicked them off and recast right away.





I ended up with 3 blues which was really cool since I can only remember catching about 10 blues here the last 20 years. 



These guys must have been from a recent plant in October since they were bright and had some great black lines on the anal fins!  I don't remember the black lines there on any of my last ones, so it must have been from a breeding stock they were growing this year.

I realized one of my old coworkers wanted fish and I sent her a message asking if she wanted any catfish.  I released them all to this point, but it was easy fishing... until now.  Of course she said she wanted the catfish and I couldn't get another bite at that point.... Of course...

I saw 3 trout rats walk by and one had a decent Lightning Trout on his stringer so the trout were here but the cats apparently beat them to my bait... or they were still car sick from the trip down from Mt Lassen.  lol

Oh well.  I went home for a Lobster Lunch and went on perimeter patrol from all of the rain.  I reset all of my trout gear since I felt certain reels would be better on some of my other rods and got everything dialed in.  I'm ready for tomorrow!

[jrodda]

Sounds like a lot of fun! Still haven't gotten a blue cat and those look nice and healthy.