Fished Topaz Lake, NV today. Hit the water on the yak at 6:30am hoping for a better day than yesterday at Cave Rock. Here’s a hint, it was a gangbusters day. Caught and landed over 20 trout with a similar amount of short strikes or lost at the yak. Definitely made up for yesterday’s skunkaroo.
WEATHER
Clear skies and sunny, temps in the mid 30s, windy in the morning then calm until about 3pm, when the wind started to pickup again.
WATER
Shockingly, the water was 40 degrees when we launched. Much colder than I expected. By the end of the day, the water temp rose to about 45 degrees. Water was pretty stained. I’m guessing visibility to about 5 feet.
WHAT WORKED
It was an incredible day for Kana Fishing baits. For plastics, the Kana Crawler trolling worm behind a dodger, Kana Fishing Seeker Minnow, and Kana Fishing Grub-A-Dub all in either the light shifter or dark shifter color schemes. The watermelon & dark watermelon were also successful. I threw these on one of my BFS setups - 2022 Shimano Aldebaran paired with the Ace Hawk Venom 7ft UL, fast action trout rod. The 1.7” Seeker Minnow caught while on a Kana Chatter Blade and naked on a 2g jighead. This Seeker Minnow runs true and at any speeds. It’s an incredible plastic bait. The Grub-A-Dub caught while naked on a size 6 hook and on the Kana Chatter Blade.
The real action though were spoons. The SC Diamond 3.5g spoon in Rainbow Trout pattern was very popular trolled at 65-70ft back at 1.6mph. The other popular spoon was the SC by Kana 3.5g spoon in chrome & blue color scheme - same setback, same speed. Had several double hookups. Once the wind died, the water became glass and I trolled further back (~100ft) with the SC by Kana 5g spoon, same speed - 1.6mph. Ended up catching 3 or 4 trout on the 5g spoon.
WHAT DIDN’T WORK
Minnow plugs didn’t work for me. Rapala’s, Flicker Shad, and Dynamic HD failed to produce. However, my buddies caught a few on a small Maglip in chrome. One buddy also caught on the Rapala Scatterrap. But, these baits produced nothing for me.
SUMMARY
Topaz is fishing really well. Shore anglers were finding success with nightcrawlers, Power Bait, and Power Eggs. However, the crazy action requires being further away from shore. The hot spot today was water at least 100ft from shore at the far end of the lake. This is the furthest from the boat ramp. We call it the “farmland” area. The water was too shallow within 100ft from shore, roughly 4-5ft deep. The active trout were in the 10-15ft water column. All topwater. They really liked the flash of the chrome or silver spoons.
Note: Majority of fish were between 0.5-2lbs or 10”-15”. Nothing to write home about. What lacked in size was made up by quantity. It was non-stop action once we hit the hot spot.
The other good spots today were the areas across from and near the boat ramp. However, these fish were really small between 10”-12” tops.
YOUTUBE VIDEO (@BayAreaBFS)
Video work is in production. Expect an overall video of the day, as well as, some short videos of the BFS action and new bait action. Will try to update with links after they go live on YouTube.