Opening Day Report

[Seth]

Caught 16 in the first 45 minutes. The first one was a 22 incher skinny rainbow that only weighed 2.95lbs. I ended up with another 18 incher and two regular stockers that I put on the stringer. All fish were caught on a 1/16oz brown and orange marabou jig I tied a few nights earlier. I had tag 600 something at 6am so I'd bet they only sold 1000 adult tags and stocked 6000 fish. Should be plenty of fish left for a while with the weather that is coming.

[Jerry Rapp]

thanks for the report!

[laker67]

Thx Seth, glad you caught some fish.

[Smalliebigs]

nasty!!!! your gonna eat those pellet pigs??? nasty!!! they will taste like dog food.....I guess if deep fry them they won't taste too bad??? i just don't eat fish from hatcheries.

[Jerry Rapp]

nasty!!!! your gonna eat those pellet pigs??? nasty!!! they will taste like dog food.....I guess if deep fry them they won't taste too bad??? i just don't eat fish from hatcheries.

I agree. I would have caught 3 or 4 of the smallmouths and just stuffed them down my waders and then walked out of the park with the trout on the stinger. Then ditch the trout, and have some real fish for dinner.

[fishinwrench]

That $#it is all in your head. Those stockers will eat just fine.

I know I'd rather be eating some hatchery trout tonite instead of whats in front of me right now.

[laker67]

nasty!!!! your gonna eat those pellet pigs??? nasty!!! they will taste like dog food.....I guess if deep fry them they won't taste too bad??? i just don't eat fish from hatcheries.

Likewise, them 10 inch smallmouth fry up just like crappie. 20 or 30 of them make quite a meal.

[Seth]

I gave these to my pops to smoke. I'll eat them but definitely prefer other fish like white bass and crappie. The secret is lots of Andy's seasoning. You could probably roll a dog turd in that stuff and make it edible lol

I don't eat smallies but they probably taste just as good as the green bass. Green bass from cold water taste as good as anything that swims.

[jdmidwest]

Since the pellets are mostly fish meal, it should only make the trout taste fishier. If a smallie is feeding on minnows mostly, how does that affect the flavor?

[Seth]

On Taneycomo we have caught a mix of white fleshed stockers and some that had pink flesh. I assume that means they were fish that had been in the river for a while. The pink fleshed fish did seem to have a better flavor but it wasn't enough to be a game changer to me.