Aggressive Rainbows

More lake resident rainbows.  Caught all males today and they were all fairly aggressive takes.  I was able to see the take from the last fish on the egg pattern as he cruised past me in the shallows.  Here are a couple of the better fish on the day.  Winds were pretty rough but I managed with quartering casts into it.

Still a dink by Willi standards

Male that turned on my egg and crushed it

Big Fish Willi

Met up with Willi and Steve this afternoon for a couple hours of action.  I found a lot of 12-16 inch fish today and had good action slow stripping buggers but Willi continued his big fish whispering streak of late with this fish while I was there to net and photograph for him.  It was nice to see these guys out doing their thing and I always pick up some good info on technique and patterns from Willi.  He always seems to have things dialed in perfectly.

Rainbows In Cruise Mode

An after work trip this evening paid off with some good action on rainbow trout actively searching the dam for food and spawning partners.  Leeches and buggers were taken with about equal frequency.  I was just dead drifting them under an indicator waiting for cruisers to stumble upon the fly.  Mostly 12-15 inch fish were found but I did get into one better male this evening.

Breakup Doldrums

Things are still opening up.  I met up with Eric for a couple hours and also hit some other lakes with just a small bit of open water.  I couldn't get much going today but at the end of the evening finally found some small rainbows that wanted to chase a bugger on a sinking line.  The fish just weren't active today.  Things should pick up as the ice continues to leave and the water warms a bit.

Eric working the ledges

Not much open to fish yet

Skunk busting stocker

Ice Break Up

Things in the valley are cracking up on the surface and open water season is just about here in full force.  I took a couple hours to chase trout on some ice ledge casts with the leech.  A nice brookie hammered it after dropping off the ice edge and to the lake bottom.  It was a good way to start the evening and my first brook trout of the year.  I shot some short video and will try to update with that once I get time to do some editing.

Here's the six weight in action from tonight.