My son and I took one my employees and her husband to Deer Creek on Saturday for some trout chasing. We got to the lake at 8:00 and found low hanging clouds and cool temps but no w*** waiting for us. Motored over to the north end and dropped lines and immediately started getting hits. Long lined dodgers and flashers with the usual hoochies and wedding rings. Found that pink with spinner blades were the ticket. Fished for about 4 hours and had non stop bites. Landed about 35 and distant released another 15ish. My guest caught a fat bow that taped at 19" and we had several others that were 17 and 18" along with a bunch of smaller planters that were closer 13-14" with everything in between. She and her husband had a blast and it was even better that there were only 2-3 lake lice out so the water was glassy calm most of the day. The sun finally popped out of the clouds around noon and the bite slowed so we called it a day. The cooler weather and dropping pressure really had the fish biting.
Looks like a very good day for the bows. I was back up at DC this morning looking for walleyes. 5 or 6 perch and a blue gill also a couple trout, but no eyes today. All were released. It was cool today as well. Hoping for good fall fishing.
Sounds like a great day on DC, and you were a gracious host, getting that couple on that many fish, sounds like a fun time.
interestingly…in past trips, I’ve been trolling for trout out in the open water and have caught perch and smallmouth bass, way out where you wouldnt expect them to be, and higher up in the water column. I need to figure out the secret for the walleyes up there, Ive tried and had no luck, but I have the trout pretty dialed in.
One of the best days in a long time! Im always happy to take new folks on the boat, Ive been blessed to be able to purchase a nice setup, I feel like its good karma to share the opportunity. 
Great report! You said you were long lining. Were all the fish in the top 10’ of water or so?
I use slider weights so I had some lines with 2 oz and some with 1/2 oz so we would have been anywhere from 5-20 feet deep, all the lines were getting hit equally so it didnt seem that the depth mattered much. It was more the color. I started out with pink, orange, green, and purple lures and the pinks were hit far more than anything else so I switched everything to pink and had hits all morning.
In my experience the rainbows will generally be in the top 20’ of the water column, so when targeting walleye, I don’t get large numbers of bows. I am not the walleye expert, but have been working on my walleye skills the past couple years. I seem to find most of my walleye on the bottom though sometimes I have found a few suspended again near the bottom. At DC the perch annoy me when I’m targeting eyes on the bottom, bait theives. I have also seen schools of perch on my electronics suspended most anywhere in the column.
Right now walleye are a bit challenging. Hopefully the bite will pick up with cooling weather. Surface temp yesterday was 64* at launch.
I prefer real crawlers for Walleye bait, but if you are constantly getting robbed by Perch and Bluegill switching to Berkeley minnows works pretty good and cannot be robbed nearly as easy.
That’s been my experience as well. Berkley gulp has a firetiger minnow in 2.5" that works pretty well when I get too frustrated with the perch.
Hey John, have you ever fished for eyes at Jordanelle. I haven’t heard of anyone catching them recently but in the first 5 or 10 years after it was open, they were being caught there. A lot of us guessed they were running up the river before the dam was built and got trapped, when they first closed off the river. We never tried to catch them, because their numbers were so low but it has been many years now, so either they died off or those that are catching them, just aren’t talking about them.
I have never fished for nor caught eyes at Jordanelle. With the guys fishing smallies, you would think if they are still there someone would get a few.
You would think, unless their numbers are just too low. I don’t know if you know about this but one of our members caught a SM bass in Strawberry and I have never heard of another one being caught there.
I have not been able to get on BFT for the last two week (said unsafe)
anyway last time I was at deer creek we had 50 rainbows and one perch by 10:30 and went home I have two rapals that are killers then use the downriggers that have kokanee stuff on, a lot of green and worms.