| FISHING WITH RYAN By Darold Givens What grandfather doesn’t want a chance to fish with his grandson? I had my chance last week when my grandson, Ryan who is 14 and will be starting high school soon said he wanted to go fishing with me. I gave him a choice of fishing in the cooler climate of Truckee or a fishing derby in the heat of Angel’s Camp. He was up for the challenge of the derby so we entered the Kokanee Project annual New Mellones Kokanee derby. Kokanee are a fresh water sockeye salmon that are planted by organizations like the Kokanee Project that are putting on the tournament. We left on a Thursday to find a campsite at the Big Oak site of a State Park on the lake. It was fortunate that we found the perfect site with a view of the lake and a large shady oak shielding our camp table. Our plan was set. We had rigged all our trolling rods Thursday night so we can practice our technique on Friday for the big day on Saturday. The day was slow but we had hooked up a few fish on a new lure I had just purchased at the local bait and tackle store called Glory Hole. Our fish were not big but we were encouraged. We even managed to catch a trout while trolling with lead line. Another trout was hooked but he was so big, he managed to break the leader. That afternoon we checked in at Glory Hole, got our official plastic bags to put our 2 best fish and I added our chances by putting us in the trout category and ‘blind bogey’ that pays money to the person who turns in a weight that is the average or median of all fish entered. I even bought more lures as the kokanee are scrappers and really tore up my new lures. On Saturday we fished our ‘hole’ and with just the two of us, we were very busy as we could fish with four rods, we could only keep two in the water as one was being put in, a fish would be on the other. We were too exhausted to laugh at the situation. The limit is ten and we had nine before 10AM and the tournament was over at noon and the weigh-in was over at 1 PM. Now we tried to catch a trout for the side-pot but did not have such luck. |
| Fishing With Ryan |
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
