Ah the thrill of the opening day. Looking over the berm at the hundreds of trout anglers fishing the main pond at the Quarry Lakes in Fremont, I was sure that I had arrived at the mecca of all that is Barni. There were at least 500 people fishing the main pond, it was truly a spectacle. Cautiously I entered the water, watching carefully for any flying bobbers or globs of powerbait. I rowed clear to open water and headed for the only section of bank that I could see that didn't have people every 10 feet. Tried there on some particularly boring bank for about 15 minutes before Dave and Paul came out and joined me. Luckily for us, you can only park on one end of the lake, and the aptly named Horseshoe Lake had a whole other side that was not immediately visible from the parking lot. Dave caught a dink smallmouth on a blade bait to get things started and from there once we got around the corner things were actually quite decent. Dave and Paul stayed in deeper water, around 15 to 30 feet and in a few hours had boated some nice fish. Dave had 3 smallies and one largemouth and Paul had at least 2 smallies, maybe more. Dave's big fish was a 2.4lber which was a heck of a nice smallie for a little pond. Paul had one that was 2lbs even. Fishing the silver buddy and rattletraps was working for them. I missed my first two fish on a tube bait, one of them a decent smallie before catching my first fish. In the next couple hours I figured them out pretty good and when the day was done, I had 8 keeper smallmouth all from 13 to 16 inches. 7 were on a 3" watermelon tube with an 1/8oz lake fork tackle megaweight. The other one was drop shotting a little shad colored plastic. Fish were from 10 to 30 feet and you had to fish pretty darn slow to get them to bite. I didn't have the blade baits to get on the bite that Dave and Paul were on, but the smallies were still a blast. You'd hook them in 20 feet and just wind like mad and the first thing they did was head straight for the surface and go airborne. Very cool. The trout fishing scene was crazy. The lake was loaded chock full of trout and if you didn't catch your limit, something was wrong. I would not be exaggerating to say that if I had felt like trout fishing, I could have caught 50 fish or more. Most were planter size but I saw fish to 5lbs being caught. I caught three trout, two on rattletraps and one on dropshot. Fun day.

Pictures!

Dave with the big smallie of 2.4lbs

http://www.calfishing.com/images/daily_reports/12_15_01_dave_smallie.jpg

Double Hookup, Paul's fish was 2lbs even.

http://www.calfishing.com/images/daily_reports/12_15_01_rob_paul_smallies.jpg

A few up close shots of these beautiful fish

http://www.calfishing.com/images/daily_reports/12_15_01_smallie_in_water.jpg

http://www.calfishing.com/images/daily_reports/12_15_01_holding_smallie.jpg