Shasta Camping Pt. 2

This is Part 2 of a 2 part post.

Day 3: 

Breakfast time!

Crunch time! It was our last day camping, we were getting ready to take off that afternoon so it was do or die for our fish catching venture. After breakfast we stopped for worms at the store for some panfish, I asked the clerk who told me her husband caught a 13 lb bass out at the second bridge. 

under the bridge

Sac River

With all of this in mind we traversed a steep hike down to the spot where the river begins widening up into the actual lake. The water here was fast and muddy but after the bridge empties into the lake and it becomes slow moving. I tossed in lure after lure in the slow moving lake areas and tossed a second line in for panfish but nothing. 

beginning of Lake Shasta

Catfishy water

My dad had a catfish set up going on his rod. I looked at the area where he was fishing next to the bridge and I thought it looked very catfishy but I figured it was too shallow. Nonetheless I was tired of bass fishing so I switched to a bottom feeding rig, tossed my line , it bounced off of the bridge structure and landed close and sunk down.   

15 inch Catfish

19 inch catfish

I wasn’t sure if it was the current or a fish but something was taking my line so I set the hook and it was fish on!  I reeled in a nice 15 inch catfish, maybe a pound or a pound and a half. It was a nice cat so my dad was over looking at it when all of a sudden his rod was being swept away. He ran, set the hook and began reeling in a cat, but it started running and peeling line. He fought it for a couple of minutes on 3 year old 10 lb test that seemed to be bad. At one point he handed me the rod and went down to land it. I reeled him on in so he could get to it and he lifted it up by the line. The line snapped, the fish fell and Ol’ pops quickly reacted and caught it in his hands. Of course the fish did stick him but with two on the stringer we headed to camp. 

We finished packing everything up and headed out of camp. We stopped by the city of Redding to get a late lunch and headed home. On the way back we spotted the Oscar Meyer mobile, which had to be some sort of good luck, right? 

Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener...

In all it was a great camping trip with the exception of the drought effects which are extremely sad. I wasn’t too impressed with Shasta but I will definitely visit Whiskeytown lake in the future. 

Total fish: 1 Catfish