Lake Solano

[GoldenStone]

I've always wanted to try Lake Solano. Any tips from anyone? Is it a good winter fishery?

[Tony Buzolich]

Lake Solano used to be the end of the "good" fishable water a few years back. I do not know the new Putah Creek do'es and don't but let me tell you how it used to be.

Lake Solano was a county campground area and was stocked with planters almost weekly. The cold water coming into the lake from Putah kept these planters alive long enough for kids and folks at the campground to enjoy a fairly easy catch using bait, eggs, and worms mostly.

What a few locals also knew was that the lake contained a good population of Brown trout. These browns also knew when the planters were being dumped and grew to some enormous sizes like large steelhead or small salmon. Most of the time they would stay in the deeper weed strewn water away from the campground area. The only access to them would be with a float tube or a pontoon or such as the lake is completely unwadeable.

Two of my buddies have targeted these big fish at different times of the year and done well using totally different techniques. Doc Cedar, used to fish the brown's at dark with a large floating bug fly of some sort and a lot of paddling to reach the desired area of the lake. My other friend, Toby Uppinghouse (today's TFO rep) used to own Fly Fishing Unlimited in Vacaville. He would fish the browns in the upper part of the lake when spawning time came around and they entered the flowing water of the actual creek. Toby has taken several large browns in the 30" range. Quite a feat in a small snag ridden area at dark.

So, that's about as much as I know about Lake Solano. With the new regulations planting may have been stopped but the campground is still there.

Hope this helps, TONY