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Gettin' Jiggy Wid It
The early bird gets the worm, but we aren't after worms now, are we...
Great job Jiggy, thanks for the report. That is really interesting. Did you hook any bass at all? Were you banging your crank on the bottom or was it free swimming when you caught the trout?
I was out there on the bank down pass ramp C at around 8:20am and caught my first trout around 9am. Left at 1pm and came home with 3 trouts.
Yes, the biggest trout I've seen caught at Hagg was with a Rebel crawdad rattle crankbait. I was out of C ramp the same morning. What a gorgeous day. We had it all to ourselves, didn't we? I limited at a steady rate of one an hour trolling the magic triangle of Scoggins, Tanner and Sain. Sounds like a law firm. My 5 trout (9-13") came on either Ford fender or willow leaf trolls followed by kokanee style wedding rings and worms. By kokannee style I mean double hooks with the mylar smile blade. Surprise of the day was a 15" catfish came 20 feet off the bottom to go for the worm. My Papa from Louisiana taught me to fish so I love them cats! I am also looking forward to bass season, but not for the bass: it means its perch time, too. Now that is a delicious fish.
Launched at ramp C at 6:30 am, trolled anything and everything and didn't land a trout until 9 am (silver minnow crank). Wind kicked up, and by 11:30 am i was ready to call it quits...but then lake went almost dead calm at noon. Thought i'd try to pick up a smallie on a crayfish crank, hooked a rainbow instead at 12:45....water temp 58, all of sudden fish are everywhere on fishfinder. Any shelf or piece of structure, or bit of cover had fish around it. Landed 7 rainbows (all on crayfish cranks in 10 -20 feet of water in an hour. Water was 60 degrees when i left at 1:45 pm. One of those days where i was glad i stuck around. I hadn't realized rainbows would eat crayfish imitations so readily. All of them were feisty fighters, which was a bonus.
I envision my next trip...waking up at 9 am...coffee...donuts...newspaper...hit the lake at noon. To hell with getting up at 5 am.
Could be the temp or it could be that big truck that came by at 12:30 and dumped 7,000 trout into ramp c. Good times regardless of the reason though.
Best of luck on your fishing adventures
I talked to the Odfw guy putting the fish in and he said these were from a different hatchery. I don't know exactly what that means but these were very feisty fish. I caught maybe 30 before I left around 3 pm and the large majority were in the 12 in range.Thanks Swimmagirl and welcome to OFF. I think I was also across the lake in the Tanner arm at that time. That would explain almost 20 bumps, nibbles, short tugs and tiny take downs I had later near C ramp. If I'd known, I would have switched to smaller lures/bait. BTW: in my experiments with scent, Mike's Lunker Lotion in garlic and/or tuna seems to be getting good attention. It seems to last quite a while, too.