I fished long an hard this day and was rewarded with 53 trout including a 20" fish. That is a lot of fish to catch, but I did spend 10.5 hours on the water to get them. For me, it was a day of hot and cold. I would hit stretches where I was spanking them like crazy and then all of a sudden it was crickets. I tried to stay tuned in to this, it is easy for me sometimes to not notice the bite has slowed when I have already caught a lot of fish. I think keeping my intensity up all day was really key to the final number.
I launched at ramp C and stayed in the no wake zone all day. I fished pretty much the whole day with my normal setup of a 1/24oz roostertail with a trailer hook and a 1/2 nightcrawler. I think I only had 2 fish on the treble all day. I trolled 50' back with a 1/8oz on the spreader (really just to prevent line twist). I varied my speed but it seemed like a slightly faster pace (compared to previous weeks) resulted in more hookups. I was mostly trolling 1.3-1.5mph.
I started the day fishing close to the edge of the wake zone and the bite was outstanding for a while. I caught a bunch there including my best fish. As the wind picked up a bit the bite slowed down for me. I looked around the lake and noticed that back towards the Scoggins arm was more alee. I was not sure if the extra chop was the issue so I decided to head back that way to see if the calmer water would be better.
That turned out to be a good move. I spend the rest of the day trolling between the Tanner arm and into the Scoggins arm a bit. There were a lot of active fish back there and they were hitting nice and hard for the most part. I do have to admit my big mistake though. The night before when I was loading up I thought I should re-tie my leaders on the trolling rods. In my laziness, I did not. Late in the day I hooked a beast of a fish. I am not sure if it was a big trout or a big smallie but my drag was ripping. I thumbed the spool to try and slow the fish and POP goes the leader. That really hurt but I fully deserved it. At least I learned from my lesson and immediately stopped fishing and re-tied both rods.
Here is a video of a few of the fish. The editing is terrible but that is why I am not in the film industry