BY DAVE HURLEY
SHAVER LAKE VILLAGE – Shaver Lake is back in the news as a brown trout factory with the fourth large brown landed within the past month coming last week. While targeting kokanee with guide Todd Wittwer of Kokanee.net Guide Service, Dave Dwyer of Glen Heights, Texas caught and kept a 16.1-pound brown.
Wittwer said, “We had a orange Rocky Mountain Tackle double-glow hoochie behind a Dick’s Mountain Tackle dodger that I customized with a piece of orange tape, and the rod popped out of the downrigger and went back down again slowly. I said, ‘That’s not a kokanee.” Once Dwyer was fighting the fish, it turned and came close to the boat before running out close to 90 feet of line. He asked, ‘Do we have enough line on this reel,’ when it was ripping line off the reel. I assured him we had plenty of line, but I had to turn the boat a couple of times to keep his line straight. After around 10 minutes, we had the fish in the net, and I encouraged him to release it, but he wanted to keep it. The fish was hooked in the corner of its mouth, and I don’t believe it grabbed a small kokanee that was on the hoochie. Our rods are soft, and we were watching them closely, so I believe it hit the hoochie.”
Brown trout in the 7- to 9-inch range were planted in Shaver at least 8 years ago, and with the amount of small kokanee and smallmouth bass in the lake, there is plenty of feed for the planted browns to grow to trophy size.
Wittwer added, “There is a minimal population of 3rd-year kokanee in the lake with the lake of plant in 2023 with only a few fish in the 17- to 18-inch range, but there are plenty of 2nd-year kokanee in the lake. A high percentage of these 2nd-year fish will mature this year.
Shaver is not the only lake producing trophy brown trout as James Hollister of Turlock caught and released a 7.5-pound brown with guide Monte Smith of Gold Country Sport Fishing.
Whether it’s trophy spotted bass or brown trout, a lake’s population of kokanee is a common factor.
