Learn More About Fish With a Mask & Snorkel
April 30, 2002
We were fishing the South Yuba just above Lake Englebright and the bite was slow. Being 12 at the time, I’d gotten a little bored with fishing and decided to go for a swim. My best buddy at the time, Rusty, kept fishing and lobbed a nightcrawler into the pool. With my mask on, I watched the worm break the surface and get pulled to the bottom by the splitshot. The weight made a small explosion in the sediment as it hit the river bed, and when the worm touched down, it started wiggling frantically. That movement soon attracted several 10- to 12-inch smallmouth bass to the area.
As the little bronzebacks hovered in a semi-circle and intently watched the writhing worm, a much larger bass came over and picked it up, rolled it around in its mouth and then spit it out.
I was mesmerized and couldn’t figure out why Rusty wasn’t setting the hook Before I could surface to tell him what had happened, an even larger bass inhaled the worm. Still, no reaction from my partner. I couldn’t pry my eyes from that big fish, so I just yelled up to Rusty through my snorkel.
Heep’s gotp fyour verm….seeep fha hookp!
When the biggest bass in the pool spat out the bait without so much as a twitch of the rod tip, I surfaced to see what the heck was going on up on the bank. There was Rusty, holding the rod, staring intently at the tip. What the heck? You just had two big smallies take your bait and you didn’t strike back…what gives? Rusty told me he hadn’t felt a thing. I was blown away that two big bass could take his bait without him being able to tell.
It got me wondering about what kind of other strange stuff went on underwater that we aren’t aware of. So, from that day on, I became a dedicated observer of fish in their natural environs. Over the years I’ve snorkeled just about every drop of water I could find and, without exception, I’ve learned something new each time I’ve visited fish in their living rooms.
One day, I was fishing a stream for trout. After working over a likely-looking run to no avail, I decided to snorkel through it to see if there were any fish in it. In the tailout, I noticed two 15-inch browns and a fat 12-inch rainbow. The trout moved to the opposite side of the stream as I passed through and then immediately went back to their original positions. From my vantage point behind the fish, I could see that they were actively feeding. Each trout had its own holding zone from which it would only dart a foot or two to intercept passing morsels. What was interesting is they spat out well over half the items they grabbed. Apparently, trout can’t always tell a piece of moss or bark from an aquatic insect, which makes me wonder why I have at least 37,000 different fly patterns in my box to precisely match every hatch known to man!
Anyway, I pointed out their location to my fishing companion on the bank and watched as he drifted a threaded mini crawler right in front of the fish several times. The trout didn’t give the bait a second look and I soon realized why. The gold hook he was using – though only a small section of it was actually showing – had a shiny appearance. Trout may not always be able to distinguish flora from fauna, but they obviously can smell a rat and tell when something’s not quite right. I told my friend to switch to a more subtle bronze hook and, on the first cast, he hooked a nice brownie.
Growing up along the Auburn Ravine gave me ample opportunities to observe trout in the confines of a small stream. Since the creek wasn’t deep enough to swim in, I’d don my mask and crawl around on the bottom. I quickly found that, if I approached a pool from the downstream side and moved slowly, the trout didn’t much mind my presence. I have always thought of trout as being super wary, but it a small stream like the Ravine, perhaps they’ve never had to fear anything my size in the water. The fish would get used to me and then go back to their normal routines pretty quickly. Whenever a shadow was cast onto the water, however, they would all bolt for cover. And if anybody walked along the bank, it would send the trout fleeing in panic.
It’s always been a different story when I’ve snorkeled or dove in big water like Lake Tahoe, however. There, it’s extremely difficult to get anywhere near the occasional rainbows I’ll see near the pier pilings and shoreline boulders. Most times, I get just a glimpse of them – usually their movement catches my eye more than anything else. I get the feeling that there are enough big mackinaw in the lake that the rainbows know to give any subsurface critter that’s bigger than they are a wide berth. When I’ve met Tahoe’s rainbows on their own turf, it’s amazing to note their impressive camouflage. With dark blue backs, silver sides and white bellies, they are almost impossible to see from any angle. Looking down into the lake’s cobalt depths, you could easily miss spotting a trout that’s only 3 feet below you because its blue back blends in so well. Same goes for looking up at one – say you’re on the bottom, facing up. From down there, the surface will have a bright whitish hue and from that vantage point, the white belly of a trout would be nearly invisible. And the silvery flanks of a Tahoe rainbow look almost translucent against the background colors of the lake if you were to look at it broadside.
In addition to giving you an underwater look at fish and their environs, a mask and snorkel can also help improve your fishing technique. There are times when I’m fishing and start to wonder – usually when the action’s slow – if my lure is really doing what I think it should be doing down there. A great way to find out is to observe if from a fish’s perspective. I was on Bullards Bar reservoir one warm summer day with a couple compadres on board and we were in hot pursuit of kokanee. We were seeing plenty of fish on the graph, tightly bunched together at 52 feet, but they just wouldn’t bite. Finally, as the day wore on and our score remained low, we decided to jump over the side and cool off. Though the water at Bullards has that amazing emerald hue from dry land, it’s actually extremely clear when you get in and have a look around. Seeing how clear the water was, I threw on my mask and had my buddies troll past me so I could see how our gear was looking. We were trolling with No. 2 Needlefish and Sep’s dodgers on downriggers and I instructed the boys to set the lures 30 feet behind the boat and drop the downrigger ball 5 feet. As they trolled by, I could clearly see that the weight of the dodger caused the rig to fish approximately 10 feet deeper than the level of the downrigger weight. Previously, we had assumed that the flasher ran a couple feet below the ball, but not 10 feet! When we resumed fishing, we again spotted the kokes at 52 feet, but this time, we dropped the weights down to 40 feet and immediately started hooking up.
A couple of summers ago on a float trip on the Trinity River, we came to a pool that had lots of salmon rolling in it. We pulled off to the side of the hole and fished hard for an hour and ended up with out even a bite to show for our efforts. We tried an assortment of baits and hardware and thoroughly worked every inch of holding water. Eventually, the fish stopped jumping and I figured they had moved upstream. Before we took off for the next hole, I decided to make a snorkel run through it to see what we were missing.
I was on the receiving end of a massive ice cream headache when I jumped in, as the water was only 55 degrees, but I was able to stick with it long enough to run the length of the pool. As I glided with the current just off the bottom, I came to a steep drop off. As I descended the grade, I was suddenly in the middle of about 100 silvery torpedoes that were streaking upriver past me. The school had been there the whole time, but since they were tucked so tightly behind the ledge, our offerings couldn’t get down to them in time, a thus we never really had a chance to hook a fish to begin with – even if they had been on the most suicidal of bites.
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