This lake just keeps producing for those in boats. Limits were the tone again for my friends and I (3 total, two absolute novices). The day started with a fishing tutorial and beer at 5:30am while waiting in line. Gates openend at 6am and I dropped my buddy off at the shop to get a boat and avoid the line while I parked.
Lucky for me the tutorial went smooth and all the rods were ready to go because about 6:10am we were trolling. The bite was AWESOME right in front of the boat dock and all the way to jump off with us filling our first stringer in about 20minutes, remember I had novices who were for the first time feeling the bite, swinging and missing as well as learning to let the fish eat the bait. Note: we had a double in the first 2 minutes of fishing, ha!!
We decided to troll back towards the boat dock from the point before the herd of boats showed up and we kept getting bit, missing a few and landing a couple more. Early morning, what worked for us was rainbow PB with a splitshot a few feet up the line. I was using an orange power worm and no bites came on nightcrawlers, at least not so early.
As soon as the sun crept over the mountains, it was like someone hit a switch and the magic bite we had slooowed way down. I switched one guy back to nightcrawlers and in about 15minutes we were into them again, sun comes up...worms go on. It was a steady scratch to about noon with some napping here and there and A LOT of beer but we managed our limits.
The last couple hours of blazing sun we put two splitshots on our lines and were bit constant on all of these: orange power worm tipped with green PB, green powerworm tipped with rainbow PB and lastly, plain green PB. I did notice that today they wanted something with some taste and having power bait really helped on the baits.
Now for me to kick my own ass. I have this thing where I never bring a net, it's kind of superstition. Today more than ever I wished we had one. One of the new guys hooked one of those monster trout. On 2lb test we took our time and guided the fish to the boat, close enough I was able to get my hands under it (read: within net range not knowing what to do with a 6-7lb trout). The way I typically land trout are either just bouncing them into the boat, or sticking my needle nose in their mouth and yanking them in that way. This was different though, this hawg was hooked on the gill plate, barely. So picking him up was out of the question and I had to go for the mouth but at the last second she made one last splash of the tail and broke off...we'll never forget that sight.
Good luck out there, I do know the ranger was telling all the boaters to fish deep and not that I don't agree with that, but honestly there are so many fish ALL OVER that if you aren't getting bit, the BEST advice is to switch up your bait. We were changing all day and that is what gave us our success. All in all it was a great day, limits with my friends...memories...and waay too much beer =)
PS...I counted over 30boats out today and was pleasantly suprised how courteous everyone was as far as staying out of peoples lines and even avoiding the float-tubers.
Edit: attached are pics of the typical trout caught, 1lb-2lbs (ish) The one in the picture gave me a present (second pic). And the shiny thing is a ruler for guaging the sizes
Linear Mode
