I've been reading about conditions on this fantastic Kokanee fishery, where past years would have hundreds or thousands schooling at the mouth's of river inlets there are maybe a few fish...Mackinaw on the other hand are what's being caught instead when jigging. It used to be people would release the Macks, now they are saying get them out, they eat way too many Kokes.

Sounds like they need to open up the season on Macks to get as many out as possible.

It used to be a catch and release going for bigger fish, but they are saying catch your limit and be done, releasing Kokes doesn't fare well for them.

I'm prepping a pad for a steel garage I'm having installed, I'm trying to get it done before the weekend so I can get out next week, as long as it's done the week should be open.

Bullard's Bar is kicking out what's being called easy 10 fish Kokanee limits, I'm going to make sure I hit that after going to Berryessa, I'll stay in touch about Berryessa...I'm looking forward to trying the downriggers.

I went through a transition from making $50k a month and homeless over a year period of losing that business, couldn't get a job at a fast food or gas store because they don't want a temporary person they train, couldn't get a $100k job doing camera color separation work for print shops that I was highly qualified for because I was dressed too nice, I damn near cried when they told me I looked more like a business owner than an employee.

Show me a hundred homeless people and you are looking at a hundred stories from drugs, alcohol, divorce, job loss of next to impossible replacement jobs, and a lot of sheer raw mental health issues. Trying to interact and help can be seriously dangerous because of the instability.

While I have no solutions, I am deeply concerned about the scale of the problem, and the way rents have gone up in the last couple years has displaced hundreds of thousands of people that were barely surviving and keeping a roof over their heads...those are the real victims here. Lose your house and you are probably going to lose your job too.

I do the same thing, it blows me away how many people say they don't want food, just money

One of the guides that posts a lot of updates on Gold County Fishing Report says the Kings and Trout are smoking on Berryessa now...he says stick baits and spoons trolled at 3.3 to 4.0, the faster the better fishing through bait balls. He was saying they had numerous doubles on...he's a fan of Speedy Shiners.

Won't need a sea anchor or smaller prop looking at speeds like that, Lol

If I'm not mistaken these Scotty's create a charge that attracts fish as opposed to repelling them, when I used downriggers a few years back I had a device that allowed you to measure the electrical charge on your boat and downriggers and dial in the correct charge you are looking for...it made a huge difference from before I got it. If I have the wrong charge going on now it sounds like the braided would be the hot ticket to neutralize it.

Is anyone you know doing any days before then? My wife and I are talking about booking the Thanksgiving holiday again, probably like Wednesday to Sunday. I'm thinking of going one day this week or next as well.

The trolling battery issues really had me shut down the last few months, I was glad to find I had been outsmarted by smart batteries.

I put a new fishfinder on the driver's side that has the full lake mapping, what a game changer it is to see the depths on the whole lake rather than find shallow spots the hard way

Heck, you can do better than that and check it out first hand

Nice fish, I will figure on making it over there for at least a day

Vexing would be a mild way to put it, I got out about four or five times in a few month period and fishing can be pretty screwed up without a trolling motor. I'm going to put a smaller pitch prop on the main motor so that I have a slower trolling speed for the faster trout trolling as a backup...it does about a 3.1mph troll with a 19p 4 blade, I should get down around 2.6 or so with a 17p 3 blade

Do you ever fish the Lower Bear, Caples, or Silver?

So Pardee closes for the season this weekend, I'll switch gears to higher Sierra lakes such as Lower Bear Reservoir, Silver, Caples. I had a guy taking out some wood this weekend that fishes all of them, he's been hammering some of the biggest Kokanee I've seen in New Melones...I'll try to get to Berryessa as well.

The last few months I've been plagued by a trolling motor/battery problem, keep in mind these are fancy group 31 Lithiums with "smart" battery technology. A few months back I went to put the charger to the batteries, and it gave me a full reading, I'm figuring okay, I only used it for an hour or so last time out, and they are good for a solid day of all day use.

My wife and I trolled for about an hour and the thing shut off, the breaker was tripped. Nothing was hot, I reset the breaker and it worked for about ten minutes.

Without the trolling motor to use spot lock for jigging, the notion of jigging for Kokanee was a dead issue. Everybody at Pardee has been doing really well on both nice Trout and Kokanee at around 40 to 60 feet, I said screw it and ordered a pair of Scotty 1106 downriggers and the versa trac mounts that work on the Lowe boats.

Back to the trolling batteries. I disconnected the 24v connections and charged them each separately, that went like it should when charging as a connected pair in 24v mode showed they were full. I finally read an article that explained what was going on with them. As a pair, the charger reads the fullest battery, meaning that the charger quits when the fullest battery is topped off, leaving the drained one drained. Then as you are using them under loads, the lowest battery runs the show and shuts things down to protect from over discharging...which is exactly what was happening.

So now it's fresh start with fully charged batteries that should perform like they used to, I'm going to put a disconnect switch between batteries and charge them separately. It is recommended that you charge separately every year or so to match the batteries up, but I'm just going to keep them matched.

Nice, where was that?

Fat Wiper on the bottom, people say they fight harder than the Stripers pound for pound.

Nice day