The sky was gradually beginning to get light in the east when I very quietly began to row my small, inflatable raft away from the Cave Rock boat launch on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

Just moments before, Elaine and I had neatly stowed our lunch, drinks, fishing poles, reels, tackle box, net, battery-operated fish finder and video camera into the bottom of the raft.

When we were finished loading everything, she very carefully sat down in one end of the raft, I pushed off from the dock, stepped into the other end of the raft, sat down, picked up the aluminum oars and began to slowly row toward deep water.

We were both wearing light windbreakers under our life preservers, and were embarking on a special fishing trip that I had planned for a long time.
I had a theory that I had wanted to test for many years.

Now, it was time to see if I was correct in a personal assumption.

For a long time, I had theorized that the really big Mackinaw (Lake) Trout at Lake Tahoe cruise near the shore while looking for smaller prey, but are spooked back into deeper water by the sounds of boat motors and people moving around inside their boats.

And, my personal theory was that you will never get a chance to catch a record-sized “Mack” at Lake Tahoe unless you can somehow quietly sneak up on it, without the fish being aware of your presence.

The Lake Tahoe record for Mackinaw Trout is a 37-pound, 6-ounce (44 inches in length) trophy caught by Robert Aronsen, way back in 1974.
To date, only a handful of Macks have been caught that have weighed 30 pounds or more.

However, many of the sport fishing guides at Lake Tahoe, including our longtime personal friend Gene St. Denis of Blue Ribbon Charters of South Lake Tahoe, California believe that there are much larger fish to be caught.
In fact, Gene firmly believes that Tahoe has Mackinaw that can go up to 80 pounds, but have never been caught.

Gino has told me that on several different occasions, he has had something huge take his bait and all of the line off of his fishing reel, before disappearing, unseen, back down into the dark depths.

On this particular day, we were about to prove or disapprove that long-held Don Q theory that sound spooks big fish.
It looked like another beautiful day at Lake Tahoe. The water was flat as a pancake with a mirror-image, there was no wind and not a cloud in the sky.

And best of all, there were no boats out on the lake yet.

I slowly and quietly rowed out toward deeper water. We rigged up the fish locator and I rowed until it told us that we were in 200 feet of water.
I stopped rowing the raft and with low whispers, we quickly rigged up our fishing poles with heavy sinkers, silver colored flasher blades and large rainbow-colored Rapala lures.

As I began to slowly row again, Elaine gradually let line off her reel until it was a long distance behind the raft. Then she did the same for my pole.
We were ready to see if my theory was valid.

I rowed in a lazy zig-zag pattern for about 20 minutes and then, all of a sudden, there was a large yank of Elaine’s pole.

She began to reel and you could tell the fish was good sized by the way it was jerking and pulling on the line.

I quickly pulled in my line to get it out of the way while she fought that fish.

Suddenly, the line stopped coming toward the boat.

Elaine whispered, “I think I’m snagged up because I can’t move it.”
I softly replied, “Geez, you can’t be snagged up, we’re in 200 feet of water. Pull a little harder on your line.”

She did, it came free, she could turn the handle of her reel again and Elaine continued to bring the fish up toward our raft.

Finally, the trout was next to the raft and I looked over the side, and said in shock, “Holy Cow! That Mackinaw is missing its back half. Something tried to eat it while you were reeling it in.”

I netted what remained of the fish and brought the bleeding half into the boat. You could clearly see fresh teeth marks on its sides where it had been bitten in half. The front half measured 13 inches which meant that fish had to have been 25-26 inches long, when it was attacked.

We stared at one another in awe and then I whispered to Elaine, “Let’s try to catch whatever is down there. I’m going to put on the largest Rapala lure that I’ve got and we’ll see what happens.”

I got my largest Rapala, smeared it with “Smelly Jelly” fish attractive, attached the lure behind the flasher blades, and as I rowed the inflatable raft, Elaine let the line out one more time.

I continued to slowly row in that same zig-zag pattern.
Then…Bam! There was a huge, violent jerk on the pole. Fish on!
Whatever it was, it was monster-sized and it began to pull more and more line off the reel.

I told Elaine, “Keep your rod tip up high, so the fish has to fight both your line and the reel. I’ll row the raft toward it, so you don’t lose too much line.”

As I rowed, the fish moved out toward deeper water and we followed.
At one point in the struggle, the fish surged to the surface, there was a huge swirl in the water, a monster-sized fish head momentarily surfaced, an evil-looking eye glared at us and then it dove back toward the bottom of the lake.

The struggle continued until Elaine got tired and asked me to take the fishing pole. I did, she rowed and I fought the fish for what seemed to be an eternity. Sometimes, I would gain line, sometimes I would lose line.
Finally, after nearly an hour of being hooked into it, the giant fish seemed to either tire or surrender and it allowed itself to be brought up alongside of our three-man raft.

It was gigantic!

The fish was longer than my three-man raft!
I excitedly told Elaine, “We have to let it go. It’s bigger than our raft. If I try to bring in into the raft, we will capsize. It I try to tow it back to shore, it might attack the raft and sink us.”

I reached over the side and measured the fish with my tape measure and it measured exactly 72 inches in length.

Wow! Six feet of Mackinaw Trout!

I carefully pulled the lure out of its mouth and slowly rowed away from the recovering trout.

In a moment, with a swish of its tail and a splash, it disappeared back into the depths of the lake.

I had just released a record-setting Mackinaw trout at Lake Tahoe.
Finally, If you have read this story to this point and believe all of the above, carefully check today’s date.

It’s April Fools Day, I gotcha!