We had been planning this trip for a while I had some stuff come up that I had to be at so we left on Friday after I left the Central Coast to handle some business in the LA area and then drove up to Coalinga to been Derrick and Ryan. We left around 5pm and sailed north.
Made a few stops along the way and got into Chester the home of Lake Almanor around midnight. Unpacked and got the rods ready for the morning and finally laid down around 1am. Up at 6am to get on the water by 6:30 in a chilly 28 degrees. We launched on the East side of the lake and worked it hard for a few fish. First thing in the morning on day one. Ryan nailed a nice smallie just under 18inch this was right after I hooked a dink smallie on a point. The lighting on this one did not turn out as it was still pretty dark out.
We rounded the corner trolling rip baits and everything as we came up here for big browns and could not find a bite. The weather was amazing to say the least not a breath of wind and sunny no clouds. We worked the water till about 1pm and called it a day and grabbed some lunch in town and talked about a game plan.
We decided to launch by the dam and fish the deep water. We got there around 430 and wanted to fish till sunset. However at this point we were greeted by some wind making it pretty tough out on the water.
Ryanimpreza and Derrick headed one way and I headed the other looking for fish. I found one on the troll within a couple minutes at 17inches was happy to get the trout skunk off the boat.
We trolled for a little longer and at about 630. I set up shop in a cove to get away from the wind. Drifted a flylined crawler and tossing a rip bait and the crawler gets picked up by 21inch - 4lb brown sweet UPGRADE.
They end up joining me and do the same thing as we were about to loose light and call it a night, I get picked up again on the crawler this time its BIG. 6lb test is screaming off my reel. I wanted to put the breaks on this fish so BAD. But held off and had a close to 30 minute battle with the fish. Finally got it in the net and hurried to shore to snap some picture and release it.
Ended up being a 24incher and close to 7lbs.
The next morning we woke up early and found it was raining so fell back asleep as one of the local kayak guys was gonna meet us at 7am and we wanted to just wait on the rain. Well it did stop raining and we got on the water at 7:30 but today was much different then the day before it was cloudy and WINDY. Great wind just what every kayak fisherman loves.
Chris the guy we were meeting had 4 browns in the boat already. He was working a pretty small area and picking up fish. We found some smallies sitting on a bank and I pulled a 15incher off it and 20 minutes later Derrick gets a pig at 18inches
We worked are way around the east end of the lake again pulling in fish at a decent rate. Think I got about a dozen smallies but most around the 12inch range. We worked down to an area called big springs and Chris found a school on the FF and dropped down and got a 20inch Salmon.. Great maybe we found them. But no that ended up being the only Salmon of the day. I did nail a decent Brown on day two as well at 23 inches.
That afternoon with the wind blowing we decided to head down to Butt Lake to try and get a brown. At this point in the trip being the last afternoon for Almanor, RyanI had yet to get a trout and wanted one. So we got there and we headed out on the troll. We got about 3 miles down the bank and he hooks up and its a dandy. 25inches. We get some photos and release it.
Biggest Trout of the trip came from RyanI he got his Nice Brown from Butt Lake.
Couple other photos from the Almanor section of the trip.
Derrick with a Smallmouth
