fishing this week

[ubear]

my wife and i arrived at Lilley's sat May 17.

we fished sat from noon to 6 and caught 4 fish. we talked to others at the dock and were told that it was hot a week ago but it was tough fishing now.

Sun, monday, were brutal ..... we did not go to trophy area but fished from short creek to roark creek. We even fished at the 2nd bridge in roark creek to not catch a fish in there. we were averaging 4 to 5 fish per day. Most were browns with the wife catching a 17 inch brown. we fished about 7 to hours / day.

we tried from dock as well.... it was slow!!!!!

tuesday night it all changed. we had caught a few browns during the day with and almost no rainbows. Near dusk, the wife wanted to watch TV ... so i fished from the docks down from trout hollow to cooper creek - on channel side ......i landed browns 16 inch, 2 at 17 inches, and the largest at 18.5 inches..... unbelievable qty in 12 to 14 inch.

by wed am, we had caught about 50 to 60 browns and rainbows - less than 10. the rainbows were all orange meat... not one white meat. we tried jigs, jigs under floats, drifting power baits.... our success came with worms.

wed - we fished the same areas and we started to catch rainbows and almost 0 browns. drifting worms or behind a cowbell .... we caught lots of fish. at 2:00 the trout release boat came up the river. i had never seen this before. a boat came by and told to get ready for action.... we were between the car bridges and teh railroad bridge.

the fish boat went to monkey island and turned around without slowing... after 1/2 hour or so, we noticed that in front of us - trout were jumping... this was close to the shore - north side ----- we could not keep a trout off the lines for the next 2 hours. we smashed barbs for easier release. we caught and released an unbelievable quantity of fish. we tried for browns across from lilley's and did not catch one.

thursday --- we fished from monkey island to rr bridge and we caught several.... kept a few for lunch.....we wanted something other than those 10 inchers so we tried other spots with limited luck on browns..... but in hte afternoon we started to catch nice rainbows in the same areas fished before.... the best luck was in the middle of the lack down river from mnkey island ....with the average size being 14 to 16 inches... when we cleaned uot the remainder of the limits we found the majorilty to be orange meat........... by 6:00 that night my wife was tired of catching fish and wanted to go out to eat. a first.

we ate at whipper snapper all you can eat lobster...... i ate a couple of fried shrimp and chowed down on lobster.

after eating out ..... we had no cabin key.... called Curtis and Phil came with a key.... sorry Phil.

the resort looked great.....we had a great time..... slept late several mornings ....... my only complaint..... a leaf blower woke me from nap.. i could sleep good there.

the fishoing was slow for a few days.... 18.5 inch brown makes up for a lot.... in the end my wife wanted to eat as she was tired fo catching fish wow!!!!!.....

[Ralda]

Great report!

[Phil Lilley]

The orange meat means those trout have been in the lake for a while. If they were stockers, they'd be white meat. It's interesting you caught so many browns.

Glad you had a good week! Thanks!!

[ubear]

many of the browns were located about 10 to 15 feet in front of boat docks.....the flashers of a cowbell bring them out from under the docks?

i caught the largest close to dark but we caught them throughout the day....

i was almost ready to leave early in hte week...... Curtis was telling us what to try..... the guys on the dock commented about not seeing a cowbell or using same in years. we just had to turn around when we hung up and used 4 pound to the hooks. we just tried to find docks in water at least 7 feet deep .... we hung up too often in shallower water.

and we did run out of gas on the lake just floated to Scotty's.

i did forget to talk about one nice rainbow caught from lilley's dock.... it weighed in at 6 pounds. the young man caught it about 7 one night. he said that he saw one fish ....threw a lure ... and it nailed it. upstream end. a football taht fed on carcuses?