](
Pop gear Cutt — Postimages)
It was really exciting to see all those fish hit and watch him land a several. The coloring on some of those cutts was gorgeous in the bright sunshine. Jon had released 4 slot cuts before I finally hooked one on the crankbait. It was also a small cutt. Just after that I hooked a nice fish on the tube jig, had it on for about 10 seconds, and it came unbuttoned. A theme that became all too common as the trip went on. I did find a nice one on the crank later.
Right after I lost the first good fish, Jon hooked up on the pop gear with a nice one. It was a fat bow 18 ½” long. If I rounded up, that would have been the 3 pounder for the day, but as it was it was well over 2 pounds.
We did some wide s-turns as we worked our way around the lake. The depth varied from 10 to almost 50 feet. Jon continued to get fish on every 5 to 10 minutes and landed about half of them. My crank produced a hit about every 20 minutes and most of them stuck. Most of the fish came when the boat was in 20 to 30 FOW. By noon we had landed about 15 cutts and 3 bows, all released except the 2 larger bows. We did get several sub-slot cutts, but had decided before the trip we only wanted the fat rainbows for the smoker. After we had solidified the virtues of trolling, we stopped off the end of a point that seemed to hold fish and dunked bait below the boat with 2 rods while we cast tubes all around with the other 2. I hooked a couple more nice fish on the tubes that didn’t know how to hang on, and Jon caught several on his. I had checked my hooks and they were sharp. Jon finally said: “I think you need to set the hook harder” I guess all that time using circle hooks on cats had left me a little out of practice for the “Bill Dance” type of hook set. I started landing a few more after that.
We were having a blast! It wasn’t the crazy fast fall fishing we had heard about, but they came regularly and were good tugs. The mountains weren’t quite as pretty as when they were showing off their fall colors in September, but the Ospreys, the Bald Eagles and the striking blue sky made up for it. The day was spectacular and the famous strawberry wind was nowhere to be found. After a few hours anchored we realized that we were not catching quite as many as we had strolling, and the bows were completely absent, so we picked up the gear on ran back over to an area that Jon thought might produce more rainbows. It was a good call. I had switched one of my rods to a dodger and worm during the changeover and we hadn’t had the gear in the water 5 minutes when I got a nice rainbow on the crank bait. I was still trying to unhook it when my dodger rod went bendo and a twin bow came aboard.
We thought we had found them, but that was it for 20 or 30 minutes. In the next hour we ran into several schools of cutts, and then Jon got another bow over 17 inches. We just needed one more. The sun was sinking fast toward the western mountains and we started putting some of our layers back on. Just after the sun disappeared, Jon got another 17 on his dodger. We made it just in time!
For the trip, we landed about 6 fish/hour with some spurts and some slow times. All the gear we tried produced something, but the hardware got the most hits. We generally trolled at 0.8 to 1.5 mph and most of the fish came about 1.1. There were some iced over spots in the backs of shallow coves, but the majority of the lake was still clear and the ramp was completely clear.
What a blast! I’m not going to say I’m converted, nothing at da berry pulls like a big ole cat, but it was a blast and I will consider it during the times when catching kitties is slow or un-available. As most of you already knew, it is a beautiful location with lots of fish to catch and sights to see.
P.S. Jon brought some smoked trout over and it was great!
