Family Fun In The Sun At Folsom Reservoir   By: Cal Kellogg September 7, 2006 More Articles by Cal

Every August for the past several years my wife Gena's 20 something niece and nephew Krista and Brendon Rush along with Brendon's longtime girlfriend Sara Gonzalez, have traveled up to Auburn from southern California to visit with family and enjoy some Norcal style recreation.

Generally the "kids" stay with Gena and I. Our routine usually consists of a visit to the Nevada County Fair and several swimming adventures to the North Fork of the American River. While the kids aren't avid anglers by my standards they do enjoy fishing and over the years they've tried their hand at battling the North Fork's smallmouth bass.

This summer things were going to be different. In years past the only fishing boat I had access to was my 13 foot Gregor, hardly the type of craft you can load the family in and head out for a day on the water. This year my Jet Craft 1825 propelled by it's 90 horse Evinrude E-Tech would provide enough room and power for the five of us.

The big question was were to go. Since the kids had made the long drive from Los Angeles I ruled out visiting any water that would require a significant car ride. Originally I wanted to head over to Bullards Bar for kokanee, but before long I changed my mind and decided on a trip to Collins Lake for trout and catfish. Just when I had my mind made up guys started sending me photos of the big king salmon they had been hooking at Folsom.

Ultimately Folsom won out and our trip was slated for Sunday August 13. The Rattlesnake Bar launch ramp is only about 20 minutes from my house and those husky kings looked mighty tempting. Plus, I figured that if the salmon bite was off I could run up the North Fork beyond the five mile per hour zone to try for catfish. I've caught some monster channel cats at Folsom and late summer is usually a good time to try for them.

Experience told me that for the best chance at kings we'd have to be on the water just after sunrise, but since it was a family trip I settled on a little later start even though everyone said they would be ready whenever I wanted leave. If I were going alone I would have been at the ramp by 6 o'clock, but I'm hardcore. The kids had been up late the night before and I didn't want to make them hate fishing by roll ing them out of bed 5 o'clock. Anyway, I was pretty sure that if I could do well at first light I could at least nail a few fish later on.

On the day of the trip I got up early, rigged the boat and loaded the necessary tackle. Around 7 o'clock Gena woke everyone up for breakfast and we were soon on our way to the lake. After launching the boat I motored out past the no wake buoys, dropped the throttle and headed down the North Fork toward the dam. Once I reached the dam I slowed down and started zig zagging toward the river channel, looking for fish on the Lowrance. Almost immediately I started marking huge clouds of bait along with a lot of bigger fish that I assumed were king salmon and trout between 45 and 90 feet deep.

I killed the Evinrude, dropped the Minn Kota and rigged three rods. I put Sling Blade dodgers on all three. The first rod was armed with a P-Line hoochie. The second sported a watermelon Sep's Pro Secret and the third was adorned with a chrome/blue Hum Dinger. Steering the boat along at 2 miles per hour with the Minn Kota's Auto Pilot system I spread the lines out between 45 and 75 feet deep. The picture on the sonar screen looked so promising that I didn't think it would take long to hook up, but the fish were playing hard to get.

After a half hour without results I started experimenting with the speed and depth. When that didn't pay off I started trying different lures. We'd been trolling for nearly two hours and my crew was beginning to look bored, so I told them we would give it another 15 minutes and then run up to my catfish spot were we'd anchor the boat and they could get in some swimming.

With only 15 minutes of trolling left I thought we might as well swing for the fences, so I rigged the starboard rod with a magnum Sling Blade followed by a pink Kok-A-Nut smeared with herring Pro Cure Super Gel and dropped it down to 55 feet. A couple minutes later I saw the rod pump a little, but figured it was only the chop created by the now numerous water skiers. A few moments later it pumped again, so I popped it out of the release and sure enough I felt the head shaking of a fish. I handed the rod off to Sara and grabbed the landing net. I expected it to be a salmon, so I was surprised to a see a fat 13 inch holdover rainbow materialize behind the boat. With a quick scoop of the net we had our first fish of the day in the boat.

After a few photos I decided to head for the upper reaches of the North Fork, hopeful that we would have better luck fishing for catfish. If anything the catfish bite was slower than the trolling action, but it didn't really matter. The surface temperature was about 81 degrees, everyone had a great time swimming, the girls got a tan, we all had a lot of laughs and there was a hapless rainbow in the cooler. All in all the day was a big success, proving that you don't need to nail a bunch of fish to have a day of family fun on the water!