by The Troutist, September 11, 2013

Okay so I promised my better half that I would slow down a bit in September, although I am still trying to figure out what happened to August. I have been putting on a lot of miles on the old angling rig whether it is pulling my boat the Pelican to a new lake or just driving to meet someone at o’dark thirty to get in some salmon angling. It is definitely taking its toll on these old bones of mine. It looks like I am going to have to push that promise back about a month and slow down a bit in October. I remember that I also promised that I would include items on the honey do list in my daily routine. I have found that to be quite difficult as I have been spending a lot of my free time checking for holes in my eyelids. My recovery time seems to be getting longer and longer as the year wears on.

I also know that Mother Nature is letting me know that I am quickly running out of time to take care of some of these tasks. I also know that there are a whole bunch of you that are finding yourself in the same situation. So it looks like I am going to have to bite the bullet and miss a few more hours of sleep and get on this stuff. Now I am just waiting for the whether to cooperate with me during the week so I can get busy. So far for September I have six salmon trips planned with a lot of those being the o’dark thirty start time and another six lake trips put in the mix with most of those being the same start time.

During my lake trips I will be working with some of Macks Lures proto-types and giving my evaluation and the best way that Brett and I have found to use them. For those of you that don’t know there is a lot more involved in that than meets the eye? Both Brett and I like new challenges and we are looking forward to it. These new products will be coming out this spring and I will keep you informed on the progress and when they hit the market. Looks like we will be breaking our spinning rods out of retirement and putting them back to work, it’s been a while. I think I will be able to give you color combinations that were using but that’s about it as far as the product goes. As far as the rest of it goes I will give you all of the other information I usually share to keep you up to date.

I am not complaining, okay I guess I am just a bit but what a spot to find yourself in. I know there are a lot of folks that would love to be in my situation, call it lucky complaining. Because I am spending so much time on the road and not making it home in a timely fashion, usually due to traffic jams. Now I find myself moving forward into the 21st Century a bit at a time, that’s right, a cell phone. Most everyone knows that I hate the computer and it is just a necessary evil to do my work. Hang on to your hats, several of my associates in the industry have told me I also need to be on twitter. Yep it looks like I will be a tweeter on twitter. I will keep you informed on the address for those of you that want to follow me as soon as I get it set up. Now let’s get into some fishing.

Last weekend found me and Brett headed for Riffe Lake in hopes that we might tangle with one of those trophy rainbow trout that folks don’t target here. The popular fishery here is the landlocked Coho salmon; although a big one here is only about 14-inches they make a very fine meal. As we approached the front gate Brett was commenting on how windy it was and as we got a glimpse of the white caps on the lake we decided to find something else.

After a quick discussion Mayfield was our choice, for two reasons. One, it was only a few miles down the road, and two; the morning was starting to get away from us. We rigged up our spinning rods with the new proto-type lures and headed to our favorite trolling area. As we got closer we noticed that our trolling lanes were covered with floating debris, weeds, branches, and tree limbs. After one or two passes our lines and lures were covered with this garbage creating quite the problem. Our only option was to work the water that was free of all the debris. This was putting us in water that we have never worked before. We would later come to understand this as a blessing.

Our set-up for the day was ½ oz of weight, a flasher, and the proto type lures. In order to stay out of all the floating debris we were working water that was 90’ deep, the one good thing about this is the surface water temperature was holding steady at 68 degrees. We were trying to dial in what would be the perfect amount of line to let out. First starting with fifty then increasing that to ninety feet, I’m not sure what depth that put us at with a trolling speed of around 1.5 MPH. Within the first hour we had hooked and released 8 healthy rainbows that put up great little battles. After realizing that neither one of us had filled out, nor paid for our parking permit we raced back to the launch. After what seemed like an eternity we raced back to resume our great experiment once again. We continued to hook and release trout after trout working this deeper water and to our surprise several were in the 14-inch range. I will admit though we had several stretches that were dead.

We called it a day at 3:30pm no longer willing to risk our lives with boaters that didn’t have a clue what boating courtesy or safety was. Over the course of the day we had two very, very close calls of being mowed over or swamped. But all things considered like starting at 9:30am and dealing with a ton of floating debris we considered that hooking and releasing 33 trout was a very successful outing. After talking with a few other anglers that had very little to show for their efforts we were very pleased.

Day two of our three day adventure found us leaving the house a lot earlier headed out to Rife to give it one more try. As we rolled up to the gate we could see the water was looking like glass. We were on the water by 8:30 am and headed for the far end of the lake. Five minutes out we encountered some mechanical problems the prop was free spinning every now and again as I throttled up to full speed. This was a big concern so we turned around and headed back towards the park launch at ¼ speed and found that it ran just fine. After checking the prop to make sure the cotter key was still holding the prop we decided to make our way to the other side of the lake. All of this nonsense had us starting to work the water at 9:30am. The first thing I noticed was that the fish were holding deeper than we could get our lures without down-riggers. Promptly at 11am the winds picked up producing white caps and we called it a day. It took us a ½ hour to limp across the lake to the ramp so we could pull out.

This was a disappointing day on several levels but the main concern was how much money I am going to have to throw at the motor to get everything back in working condition. We pulled it apart and I think we discovered the problem, put a band-aid on it in hopes that it just might get one more outing out of it before it goes into the shop. If I am lucky I can do the needed repairs myself quite possibly saving myself a few hundred bucks. Things like this take all the profit out of writing your column, it’s not like I’m on budget as it is.

Day three had us staying a little closer to the home front, Pattison Lake was our destination. We arrived at the ramp at 8am, prepped the boat and we were on the water by 8:30am. I will say there were a few things that concerned me, the boat motor, and the warning sign that toxic algae had been detected in the lake. For those of you that are not aware of what this is it is a toxic algae bloom that kills pets and live stock and will make you extremely sick and in some cases can cause death. We decided to take the risk and be extremely cautious, things I go through to get my story.

The first thing we noticed was just how cloudy the water was with algae, water clarity was about one foot at best. This is not what I would call ideal conditions for angling but at least it wasn’t a pea soup consistency. I guess if you are going to test proto-type lures extreme water conditions are a good thing. The water temp was a scorching 74 degrees surface temp, not what you would call ideal for trout. We could see them surfacing and feeding on top so we knew where they were. We proceeded to work the lake with spotty results adjusting our depth and speed in order to entice these finicky little devils into taking our offering.

After three hour of adjusting depths, color combinations, and establishing trolling patterns we finally had it dialed in. We called it a day at 2:30pm and we had hooked and released 6 rainbows running between 12-15 inches, lost another dozen, and missed at least that many. Satisfied with our results under such extreme conditions we headed back to the homestead. Things I need to work on are getting used to using a spinning rod once again. Trolling with a ½ oz of weight means I don’t need to use that much force when setting the hook. I think on several occasions I actually jerked the lure right out of their mouth. The difference between playing trout on a fly rod and a spinning rod are like night and day, very different to say the least.

As always I have posted photos on my Uncle Wes face book page.

So until next time may your next trout be your trophy mount.
The Troutist-“Uncle Wes” Malmberg.




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