W
hile the lake offers a variety of rec-
reational activities such as camping
and boating, as a fisherman, to me
the most important part of the lake is what it doesn’t offer.
At Pardee, there is no skiing, no swimming (in the
lake), no wakeboarding and no j et skiing. Lake Pardee
is a fishing lake. It is a great opportunity to get away
from all of that throughout the entire summer season
and especially on high traffic weekends such as
Memorial Day, the 4th of July holiday and Labor Day.
It is probably the lake with the least fishing pressure
that we have in this state, during the summer.
As of mid- June, there has been 20,000 lbs. of
rainbow trout planted into the lake. That makes for a lot
of fish food for the bass to fatten up on. The summer
months find much of the bass in the post spawn stage.
They aren’t the giant pot-bellied bass that we find
cruising around in the spring, but they are ready to eat.
BIG BITE MORNINGS
A key to getting some of those bigger bites in the summer is targeting them first thing in the morning
SUMMER 2014
and later in the evening. Similarly to the springtime, for the low-light conditions of the morning, I am going to go up the river and hit those long extended points and humps with a wake bait, some type of big trout topwater swimbait, a popper or a walking baits in shad or a baitfish pattern. A lot of guys will throw the zero Huddleston, fishing it real slow, right on the surface.
For the most part, I would throw all of these lures on 15 lb Berkley Trilene Big Game monofilament. On my walking baits, I am upgrading all of the hooks one size up with a Gamakatsu hook. On the Ricos or poppers, I upgrade one size, but only on the front hook.
MID-DAY STATEGY
As the sun rises and that morning bites dies off, I am going to move a little bit deeper and I am likely to end up fishing a dropshot with a Roboworm or hand-poured type finesse worm in Aaron’s magic or MMIII type colors. I rig my dropshot with a standard Gamakatsu dropshot hook and a 3/16 Strike King tungsten dropshot weight.
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