The difference was apparently night and day.
State Fish and Game crews racing to transplant all the trout they can net from fast-draining Caples Lake dramatically improved their catch in the dark Wednesday from midnight to 4 a.m., officials said.
The graveyard shift hauled 3,000 fish by tanker truck to nearby Silver and Red lakes in the tiny High Sierra county of Alpine. The day crew, by comparison, nabbed fewer than 100 on Tuesday, the start of a nonstop 72-hour fish rescue.
Fish and Game workers with no shortage of volunteers hope to capture thousands more trout today and Friday as the El Dorado Irrigation District drains Caples for repair of the dam gates this fall.
Officials are not surprised by their nighttime success. In daylight, especially on cloudless hot days, larger fish hang in the protective shadows of big boulders and tree stumps on the cool lake bottom. Come nightfall, when the surface waters darken and cool, the trophy-size trout start working the shores for insects.
That's where Fish and Game's "shock boats" are dispersing electric currents of 1,000 to 1,500 volts to stun fish for easy netting.
"We scoop them up as soon as they roll," said Harry Morse, a spokesman for the agency, which regularly stocks the lake with rainbows, brooks, browns and Mackinaws.
The three shock boats far outdid the five vessels trolling with gill nets.
"As soon as we saw what was happening, we called in four more electro-shock boats to really get hot and heavy at it tonight," Morse said Wednesday.
Few fish have died in captivity, he said. One of them happened to be a 33-inch-long, 18.5-pound brown snagged in a gill net, the largest fish yet caught.
Biologists necropsied it to determine its age. Morse wished he'd photographed it as proof to anglers that Caples truly does harbor lunkers.
Call The Bee's Chris Bowman, (916) 321-1069.
