Friday at DC

[chubby chaser]

Friend and I made second trip to DeerCreek on Friday, 5/19.  Arrived 6:15 on water by 6:30.  Water temp 54F.  Wind dead calm.  Bottom bounced at 1.0 to 1.2 for walleye for a couple hours and boated three, all about 18”. Nice fish.  Sorry I forgot to take pictures. Trolled for trout for next couple of hours.  Boated three, one over 20”, and lost two more at boat trying to net them.  Very strong fish!  Speed 1.7 to 2.2; depth 5’ to 15’.  Still calm; could have used some wind to put chop on water.  Trout filets were bright red, almost like salmon.  All in all it was a very pleasant morning on the lake.  Love the high water level.
Observations: 1) Did not see the usual numbers of trout or walleye on fish finder.  Wondering if others have noticed same.  2) Trout were all mature, no stockers or first year planters.  3). Did not see any schools of perch.  Perhaps I was at wrong depth, but wondering if perch population was affected by low water last year.
Last thought:  I took the time to throughly clean / buff boat (fiberglass) and apply new Stark 4-step ceramic coating.  Supposed to last 2 to 3 years before need for new application.  Anyone have any experience with this new gel coat protection?   trueblue2

I was up there saturday and started at the dam and trolled all the way north using usual dodgers and wedding rings.  didnt have much action until I took off a dodger and added a mac's flasher and it was like a switch was turned on.  I think the extra flash called them in because none of the other lines were getting hit like the flasher line.   had about 120 feet of line behind the boat. one cool thing I saw was 2-3 times fish were jumping out of the water at about the same location my flasher was. seemed like they were attacking it so aggressively or were scared by it so bad that they left the water.  with the bright sunshine and calm water, I think it really attracted them.  ended up with some real nice fat rainbows.  biggest was around 20" and close to 3 lbs.