Martis
The phone rang and it was my brother John on the other end. He was super excited. “Dude, I just got back from this lake and it was incredible”! I remembered that he had heard from a buddy about an “artificial flies and lures only” lake near Truckee, California that was supposed to have nice rainbows and a few big brown trout. He proceeded to relay the entire story in great detail. When he first rolled up to the lake he couldn’t believe the number of float tubers that he saw. They were all fly fishermen and he saw a bent rod as he started to drag his gear out of the car.
He pulled out his trusty countdown Rapala and pinched the barbs down, noticing a few glares from the other fly fishermen in the parking area that were stringing up their $500 Sage rods. No matter, he had seen this all before and it didn’t bother him any more. He pumped up his tube and headed on out. He knew it was going to be a great day when he got slammed hard on his 3rd cast. A few minutes later he had a fat 16” rainbow to the tube. A quick twist of the needle-nose and off the fish swam, no worse for wear.
What happened next was one of the best days of trout fishing anyone could hope for. He ended up with around 40 quality rainbows up to 21 inches and also landed a nice 22 inch brown trout down near the dam. As darkness fell he hooked and lost a large fish that dogged down deep and felt “brownish”.
“Listen Mark, you need to get up here… this lake is on fire”! I didn’t need much persuasion and started gauging my wife to see how she felt about me taking off on a last minute trip. This was before we had kids so it was pretty easy for me to get her blessings and off I went. It was around a 7 hour drive to my brother’s house in Chico but it flew by. I was on the Bluetooth, (remember those ear pieces??) most of the trip swapping fishing stories with buddies and before I knew it I was pulling into John’s driveway. He had his van gassed and ready to go. We slept in this van on many trips to save the money on the seedy hotels we occasionally stayed at. Many nights were spent playing poker at the local pizza joint before crashing in the van parked at the edge of our target lake or stream.
We had heard that there was some weather moving in but when you are young you don’t seem to care as much about that kind of thing. We rolled up to the lake in the dark and we were the only rig in the parking lot area. I always struggle with sleep before a day of trout fishing. I can be bone-dead tired and still lay there wide-eyed with anticipation late into the evening. It got so bad I started taking Nyquils to help me pass out. This evening was no different and it was around midnight before I finally dozed off.
We had an alarm set for 4:30AM but I woke up at 4:20AM. This happens a lot when I am going fishing. I have no idea how my body knows what time it is but more often than not I will wake up a few minutes before my alarm goes off. We had prepped most of our gear the night before so we were in the water ready to go at legal and we had the entire lake to ourselves for the first hour or so. The fishing was amazing with many nice trout to net. We used to fish 6 pound Maxima Ultra-Green when we were casting our lures and occasionally we would break off a particularly large fish. In our minds these break offs were always big browns cutting us off with their jagged teeth.
We kicked in for lunch and made some small talk with a few of the fly guys that were parked nearby. Some didn’t see our spinning gear and assumed we were fly fishermen like themselves. The discussions were always better this way. They were all catching fish but it seemed like we were catching a few more fish than they were. After some PB&J sandwiches we headed back out. Our plan was to work our way towards the dam and pound that area around dusk. We had noticed some ominous clouds moving in but didn’t pay much attention to them. It wasn’t until it started spitting snow that we began to realize that we were in for a very cold evening in our tubes. We noticed a lot of the other anglers packing up and heading home but we were determined to give the dam area a shot to see if we could hook some of the big browns that were rumored to swim in this lake.
I have had a few of what I call “Thunder Boom Bites” throughout my life. I think I stole that description from some trout book I read a while back. The idea is that trout turn on right before a storm hits. I know this to be true because I have seen it definitively happen 3 times. Now, keep in mind that it hasn’t happened the other 300 times that I have been fishing as a storm rolled in so I am not sure exactly which conditions trigger it. All I can say is that the fishing has gone off in a way that was almost impossibly good on these 3 occasions and it can only be attributed to the mythical “Thunder Boom Bite”. I will probably write about these 3 bites in another article.
This was not one of those days. In fact the rainbows seemed to shut off as the storm started and as the snow began to pile up on my float tube I wasn’t sure it was going to be worth the effort. We had timed our kick just right and ended up at the dam around dusk. We began fan casting, trying various depths to try to locate some fish. I looked through the snow at my brother, who was now completely covered in snow and laughed a little at how crazy this was. I was jerked back to reality by a jarring strike and immediately the fish began to pull drag. I knew this was a decent fish and John started to kick over to help me land it. After a spirited battle I landed a nice 25” brown that had vivid red spots that I remember to this day.
I had hooked that fish no more than a few feet from the rocks that formed the dam. John adjusted his casting and began to work closer to the dam. It was getting dark now. Suddenly John set the hook hard and a HUGE brown immediately jumped out of the water, head shaking violently. It seemed like slow motion as I could clearly see the Rapala in the beast’s mouth. This fish had to be at least 30 inches and was fat! As the brown reached the apex of his leap the lure came shooting back at my brother and the fish landed with an incredible splash that seemed to be magnified by the silence around us.
I had watched John lose a giant rainbow the previous year at Crane Prairie up in Oregon and knew that this was not going to help that wound heal. There was a moment or two where we just sat there staring at each other in disbelief before anyone said anything. I tried to downplay the size but I knew what I saw. For us to hook a fish like that out of a small lake like Martis was something that usually required hundreds of hours to make happen. We fished a little longer but losing that big fish had knocked the wind right out of us and it wasn’t long before we were kicking back to the van in the darkness.
The next year Martis was drawn down and many of the fish died or were washed down into the creek below the lake. We have followed the story of Martis in hopes that it would return to its former glory but as far as we know it has never, and may never be the same. We were glad to have experienced a tiny sample of what an incredible fishery it once was. These lakes are gems and I value each gem that I have found through my trophy trout fishing life. I hope you get out there and find your Martis.
Mark Knoch
