We drove up to Pine Mountain Lake area for Mother's Day. A chance to get away from the busy routine of the Silicon Valley area and look at potential vacation areas.

Pine Mountain Lake is a large gated community that surrounds one of California's many reserviors. PML (as the locals call it) has its own airport and strict rules on who can use the lake (to keep traffic there to a reasonable level).

We rented a cabin right on the waterfront but since it was Mother's Day weekend, I left the fishing equipment at home.

I did manage to spend a little bit of time on the dock just watching the water and the fish. The water was clear enough that I could see into it fairly well. A couple times, I saw what I'd guess is maybe an 11" trout chasing some of the small blue gill back into the brush near the shore.

The bottom seems to slope pretty slowly where we were which made a nice shallow area for studying the local fish.

Saturday morning, I could see more than a dozen blue gill rising near the dock. I watched them swim up and take something near the surface. It took a few minutes for it to dawn on me that they weren't taking something on the surface...they were taking something in the film.

I knelt down close to the water and started looking for whatever it was they were eating so willingly. Not having my bug net, I couldn't just sweep the water to find out.

A couple minutes later, I had the answer. I found the emerger they were feeding on and studied a couple after scooping them from the water with my hands.

Sunday morning, while everybody else was waking up, I snuck down to the dock in hopes of getting a macro picture of the emerger I found on Saturday.

No hatch was going on even though it was about the same time of day and same conditions. So, I figured I'd try taking pictures of the fish.

I was using my Pentax Optio WP (water proof) so I stuck it just under the surface of the water and waited patiently.

I was hoping the fish would swim close enough that I could get a decent shot. Imagine my surprise when they came so close to the camera that I literally had to switch to macro mode to get the shots!

I don't know if it was the beeps that the camera makes as it focuses or maybe just the shiny camera itself that caught their attention. Several of the young bluegill (maybe 5") came right up to pose for the camera.

Here are some of the better shots:

[url=http://thwack.smugmug.com/photos/69697988-S.jpg:b5587]http://thwack.smugmug.com/photos/69697988-S.jpg[/url:b5587]

[url=http://thwack.smugmug.com/photos/69698209-S.jpg:b5587]http://thwack.smugmug.com/photos/69698209-S.jpg[/url:b5587]

[url=http://thwack.smugmug.com/photos/69698458-S.jpg:b5587]http://thwack.smugmug.com/photos/69698458-S.jpg[/url:b5587]

[url=http://thwack.smugmug.com/photos/69702395-S.jpg:b5587]http://thwack.smugmug.com/photos/69702395-S.jpg[/url:b5587]

If you replace the "-S" near the end of any of those URL's with "-L" (for "Large" size) or "-O" (for "Original" size) you can see a much more detailed version of the picture (and a longer download time which is why I posted the URL's for the smallest size).

While laying on my stomach with my hands in the water waiting for the fish to pose, I saw an ant struggling on the surface. I kept wondering why none of the bluegill had grabbed it yet when I noticed that indeed one of the small bluegill had spotted it.

I watched the fish study the ant, slip up from below, and sip that ant right off the top.

I think I had almost as much fun studying what was going on as I would have fishing. It definitely showed me why it's good sometimes to set the rod down and pay attention to what's going on before starting to fish.



[This message has been edited by Thwack (edited 15 May 2006).]