Hunting New Hogan Reservoir's Bodacious Stripers With Monte Smith   By: Cal Kellogg AUg. 18, 2009 More Articles by Cal

When folks think of fishing the Mother Lode Lakes, kokanee fishing at New Melones, swimbaiting for largemouths at Don Pedro, or soaking Power Bait for trout at Pardee or Amador are the sort of things that pop to mind.

Of course there are other lakes in the Mother Lode, including Camanche, Tulloch and New Hogan. New Hogan Reservoir may well be the most over looked Mother Lode lake.

New Hogan sets in the low foothills not far from Ione. When full, Hogan claims 4,400 surface acres of water and about 50 miles of shoreline. In the spring when the water is up and hills are green, New Hogan and the surrounding area is pleasing to the eye.

As spring gives way to summer the grass goes brown, the lake level goes down and the air temperature goes way up…At most foothill lakes the fishing slows down when the temperature goes up. At New Hogan this situation is reversed. As the temperature soars, so does the action and what the lake lacks in terms of scenery it makes up for with adrenaline pumping angling action!

New Hogan Reservoir was created back in 1964. In the early years it earned a solid reputation as a trout and black bass lake. And then it happened! Stripers were introduced into the system.

Most believed that the stripers would not be able to reproduce in the lake, but…in some cases at least, Mother Nature will not be denied. The stripers didn’t only reproduce, but they flourished on a diet of trout, small bass, panfish and threadfin shad.

These days, the trout are gone, the remaining black bass are nervous and the striper fishing is excellent…for those that know how and when to fish.
For example, a couple summers ago the Fish Sniffer’s Dan Bacher and Allen Bonslett visited the lake with Bruce Hamby. They ended up landing 9 hard fighting bass up to 7 pounds while trolling with kokanee gear!

Being a striper fishing fanatic, I’ve been anxious to give New Hogan Reservoir a try for a long time. About a week ago, I finally picked up the phone and gave Monte Smith of Gold Country Sportfishing a call about nailing some land locked stripers.

He confided that he hadn’t been fishing the lake, but was planning to take a scouting trip to see if the stripers were active. We compared schedules and decided that my dad Cal Kellogg Sr. and I would meet Monte at New Hogan at 6 am on July 9.

We all arrived at the lake right on time and after exchanging hellos, Monte talked about the striper fishing New Hogan offers as he prepared to drop in his big Willie jet boat.

“You can catch stripers here all year long. Most of the fish are probably caught between April and September, but the best time to fish for them is during the heat of summer,” said Smith. “For some reason the hotter the temperature the better the bass fishing is. It’s during the hot weather that you see the bass boiling on the surface as they chase shad. That’s when things can get really crazy.”

Minutes after putting the boat in the water, Monte rigged 4 rods with either rigged anchovies or shad. Two of the lines were dropped down to 18 feet on downriggers while the other two were attached to planer boards riding about 100 feet off the port and starboard sides.

Within the first half hour a planer board rod went off and dad was into the first fish of the day. The beautiful 4 pounder put up a hard fight, but dad was ultimately able to steer it into the net.

After a few photos we put dad’s bass in the cooler and continued to troll. We got a couple more strikes over the next hour, but neither of the fish stuck, setting the tone for the rest of the day.

Throughout the morning we got short strike after short strike. “The moon is pretty big right now. These fish are acting as if they fed last night and are only nipping at our baits,” speculated Smith.

With Monte scheduled to attend a Giants night game down in the Bay Area, and me scheduled to hit the delta early the next day for black bass, the plan was to get off the water at about noon.

When the clock struck 11 and I was still without a fish, I was almost ready to accept defeat when the side planer rod on the portside go hammered.

On Monte’s light St. Croix trout rod, the bass was totally in charge for several minutes. I kept the line tight and gradually felt the battler weaken. My striper turned out to be a fat healthy 5 pound male.

“Most of the stripers we catch at New Hogan run 4 to 5 pounds and fish up to 6 pounds are common. Occasionally someone hooks a real monster. The lake record is over 30 pounds,” disclosed Smith as he filleted our fish.

If you’d like to tangle with some of New Hogan’s landlocked stripers give Monte Smith a call and he’ll put you on the fish (209) 848-2746.