Yeah I know what you mean about fishing on the same lake day after day to figure out the color thing. Last year around this time the consulting market was pretty much dead and I was able to spend 3-4 days a week fishing. This was before I had my boat so I ended up concentraing on Shadow Cliffs and Chabot from the shore, rental boats and my float tube. Now that I have the boat, I have yet to hit up these lakes this year (maybe once at Chabot in Jan/Feb).

After about 3 weeks of experimenting with new baits/techniques I found that a 1/2oz rooster tail in gold/black did fairly well (largest was just over 6lbs). It's actually kind of funny because I was fishing for large thunder trout one day and kept pulling in bass in the main lake. I came across them at TriCity just browsing through the tackle area. The trick is to slightly bend the tip of the blade with a pair of needle nose pliers and slow down the action of the bait and more spin.

This also worked really well when fishing for spotted bass at Oroville around the same time frame. Oddly enough when middle of Sept rolled around this bait stopped producing for me.

I guess if you're going to spend a lot of time at Shadow Cliffs from about middle of July-Sept, I would recommend picking up a couple.

Anyway that's a bit off subject, but who cares. :D

Vince
vince@theblankslate.com