Spring Trout

[TMBob]

I am all new to this Spring Trout fishing. Started fishing in November 2016 (lake fishing) after being raised near the Lake Wa. Stan Sayers Pits, so the stocking of lakes is all new to me, thus the questions

So I have read quite a few Reports on this site of local lakes that have been recently planted having super poor results. I myself have visited a few of these Lake that got 10,00 and 7,000 plants and caught 2 fish with a whole lot of effort that were "super small" compared to what I have been catching all winter!

So what gives I ask? Is it the La Niña weather that we are having? Does it take the fish a longer time to get acclimated because of the cold water temps? Normally just how long does it take for plants of any size range before they start to bite?

I really, really thought based on some You Tube videos that it would be a ton of fun to catch planted Trout and that I would get about twenty or so. I am a Catch and Release Barless Single Hook person. Bait, last option if even needed.

[Fishin'Daze]

TMBob

I've fished for trout in lakes all the time usually trolling from my boat. I was at a local lake the other day (Black) mostly to run my boat getting ready for the upcoming season. Trolled for about 1 hour and caught 3 holdover bows which is ok because this lake hasn't been stocked recently. I usually don't target recent plants that are less than 1 lb but do however know my local lakes well enough to target holdovers. I mostly fished for bass at Black lake the other day and got skunked a few strikes though. But as far as recent trout plants go my experience has been the smaller the plants are the longer it takes for them to get hungry enough to bite often and they seem to stay in schools more. So fishing from shore your chances of hitting the schools are lesser than from a boat. But the bigger trout can often be found near shorelines looking for a meal (early am and evenings). I think the water temp this year is playing a big part - Black lake seemed alittle cooler than normal for this time of year. The other day water temp was around 48 degrees. I've found 52 - 58 degrees is the best temp for active trout. A good solid week of warmer weather along with sunshine should improve trout fishing. Right now it's bass season. Keep trying.

[JoshH]

A few things about spring trout fishing. Fall/Winter fish will always be larger, they have had all spring/summer to grow. Recently planted fish the past few years have been running in the 10-12 inch range, which is actually larger than in years past. So catching larger fish in the fall/winter is what you should expect. Trout will bite at any size as long as it fits in their mouth. This last fall at 2 different lakes that get planted with put/grow/take fish I couldn't keep 6-8 inch fish off of my line.

Water temperature is a big key in trout fishing, as well as what's in the lake with the trout. Trout prefer water temps of 50-60 degrees. Right now, it's colder than that. Doesn't mean that they aren't active, or won't bite, but you aren't going to get your 20, even with recently planted fish. Recently planted fish do seem to stay together more, and they are looking for someone to toss them nuggets from the surface.

When the water is colder, since the trout are less active, they are more selective as to what they will chase. I've found I have to be exact on size/color if I am trying to imitate what they are feeding on. Better water temps, that doesn't seem to matter as much. If I can't get that matched up and get strikes, I will try for reaction/aggression strikes with spoons. Then it can be a matter again of finding the thing in my box that pisses them off enough.

Give it another few weeks, and if you have the right hardware on, you'll get your 20+ fish to catch and release.

[Gonefishing]

The day the fish are planted the fishing (if you are close to where they were planted) will be really good. The next day not as much. The day after that... a little worse. Next day you might be lucky to find a fin (my experience). And not it's not because the lakes been fished out. The fish are adjusting to the new environment. About 2 weeks after the plant the fishing seems to improve.

At least that has been my experience at certain lakes the last several years.

[countryboy87]

It can vary lake to lake as well as year to year.. Ive been going to a couple local lakes that were planted a few weeks ago and its very tough fishing this year.. the cold water has to do with it to a extent but there has been colder years when i have gone down and just slayed after they plant it.. Just keep at it and at the least you will have some good casting and rigging experience come spring/summer..

[TMBob]

Found a very small lake that is producing....like I had nearly 100 today. Barbless and did nit keep any. Only one swallow.
Largest was 15" with a few 11-12" but the rest were recent plants about 9-10"

I guess I now know what it's like to fish a planted lake that produces....Trout Magnet....I guess that is the proper name for the lure.

[Juniah87]

JoshH nailed the temps. Even in the hatchery setting, we have to reduce the percent body weight we feed each pond based on temperature. Our feed calculations are based on 2 things, the total estimated pounds of fish in the pond, and the temperature. This is why they plant starting in March. It saves a little bit of money because they don't have to feed those fish, and the cooler temperatures will allow them to get more fish into the lakes without them being caught before the opener, giving the largest number of anglers the biggest chance for a successful day on the water. As a general rule for all hatcheries, we do not feed the fish being planted at a minimum 2 days before planting. The transportation upsets them and causes them to vomit and poo, and can make the interior of the tanker trucks quite nasty if we don't do this. Once the temperatures in the local lakes hit about 55 degrees, and you follow the weekly planting records on the WDFW website, you won't be able to keep those 8-10 inchers off your line. Similarly, most muddy bottom lakes carry a disease that trout are very prone to. It's typical name is called "ick", caused by the Ichthyopthirius protazoan, and this hits once temperatures are in the 65+ degree range, so in the shallower lakes that receive fish plants, you may also see a slowing of the action once water temps get in the 65-70 degree range. When they come down with this, their appetites are significantly reduced, and the protazoa can eventually kill the fish.

If you are having trouble, a goto lure that ALWAYS produces is trolling a black woolly bugger with no weight at a very low speed. I've caught thousands of trout trolling one of these off the end of an ultralight spinning rod. My theory is they vaguely look like the larger pellets we feed the fish at the hatchery. I uploaded a picture of this lure just in case you are unfamiliar with it.

Glad your last outting came with some success. Hopefully you filled out a fishing report!

Another great way to fish around the opener and after plants is sight fishing. Especially if you have a boat. Watch the surface, and see where the fish are actively feeding. Where you see one or two fish jumping you can be sure there are another 5 or 10 circling underneath feeding as well, just not breaking the surface. Casting any kind of spinner or winged bobber with 1/4 ounce weight or smaller with power eggs or nightcrawlers will give you very good numbers, and will also help you hone your presentation, so you know how fast of a presentation the rest of the fish in the lake will be attracted to.

Hope that helps, and I hope your newly found trout fishing fun turns into an obsession that brings you years of entertainment!

[Fishin'Daze]

Juniah87,
It's great to have your input. You mentioned the "ick" disease killing some of the fish - does the WFDW have any idea on the percentage? The reason I ask this is because with all the plants in the past one would reason that the lakes would have a healthier stock of bigger trout (holdovers). I've always wondered where all the trout eventually end up. Yea alot are caught by fisherman and birds and some just die off - but again with so many plants a good number should live to grow bigger. My experience has been this is not the case at least here in Western WA. I'm always hoping that eventually some local Western WA lakes will improve in size and not just numbers. Let's face it 8-10 in trout are ok for kids but not so much for more serious adult trout fisherman. Again this isn't meant to bash your work or the WFDW but to put into perspective the quantity vs quality.
For example, in SD walleye fishing is huge. Some lakes from time to time receive walleye plants to help the population. After a few years usually in these lakes you can really notice a change in not only the quantity but the quality. When I have visitors from SD/Minn they chuckle at our trout lake fishing - not to make fun of but they say "really this is what people are fishing for."
I know this may not be quite comparing apples to apples but it appears that our trout fishing in Western WA is about harvesting recent plants and not sustained healthy and lager fish populations. Do the trout leave the lakes in numbers?
My thoughts are to have more lakes with slot limits so hopefully larger fish can flourish. But I'm not an expert on this other than my many years of fishing for trout - which is the bottom line.
So any thoughts you have on this subject would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

[JoshH]

Fishin'daze,

There are actually quite a few western Washington lakes that do have quite a few hold over fish. There are a few reasons why you don't hear about it much though. Most people trout fish the spring. This time of year with so many plants that will hit just about anything, the hold overs never have a chance to hit your line. Another reason is that I have found those hold over fish headed to bottom in the hot months and wind up staying there for the most part. They become harder to target and they have had a whole season or more of feeding naturally. They won't just bite whatever comes by. You have to think larger lakes or those that don't have easy access and aren't fished super hard in the spring.

We have to have the put and take plants by WDFW otherwise most lakes would get completely fished out, and most don't have spawning populations due to development etc. Many of the trout lakes rainbows aren't even native to. My understanding is that cutts are native to many of them that are almost exclusively rainbow lakes now.

Anyway, hold overs are out there, they just aren't as easy to target.

[Juniah87]

Juniah87,
It's great to have your input. You mentioned the "ick" disease killing some of the fish - does the WFDW have any idea on the percentage? The reason I ask this is because with all the plants in the past one would reason that the lakes would have a healthier stock of bigger trout (holdovers). I've always wondered where all the trout eventually end up. Yea alot are caught by fisherman and birds and some just die off - but again with so many plants a good number should live to grow bigger. My experience has been this is not the case at least here in Western WA. I'm always hoping that eventually some local Western WA lakes will improve in size and not just numbers. Let's face it 8-10 in trout are ok for kids but not so much for more serious adult trout fisherman. Again this isn't meant to bash your work or the WFDW but to put into perspective the quantity vs quality.
For example, in SD walleye fishing is huge. Some lakes from time to time receive walleye plants to help the population. After a few years usually in these lakes you can really notice a change in not only the quantity but the quality. When I have visitors from SD/Minn they chuckle at our trout lake fishing - not to make fun of but they say "really this is what people are fishing for."
I know this may not be quite comparing apples to apples but it appears that our trout fishing in Western WA is about harvesting recent plants and not sustained healthy and lager fish populations. Do the trout leave the lakes in numbers?
My thoughts are to have more lakes with slot limits so hopefully larger fish can flourish. But I'm not an expert on this other than my many years of fishing for trout - which is the bottom line.
So any thoughts you have on this subject would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

The mortality percentages of ick are extremely variable. It's hard to say what the mortality rate would be post-plant, because when they get ick in the hatcheries we treat them with potassium permanganate. The 2 biggest killers of fish with any disease, including ick, is stress, and temperature. At Silver Lake, a private lake run by a husband and wife that own the resort on the lake, I think it's in Thurston or Pierce counties, they had an ick outbreak. They hold their fish in large netpens, which actually turned out to be the cause of the problem, the nets hung close to the bottom and the protazoan grew on the bottoms of the nets and infected the fish, and because it was little to now flow through the net pens, it started to obliterate their fish. They called the Puyallup hatchery,a nd the lead worker sent me out to check on the fish, sample their size, and watch their feeding practices. Once I got there, and netted a couple dozen fish from their netpens, I could immidiately tell they had come down with ick. They ended up losing around 20% or so of their netpens. But again, this isn't really an apple to apple comparison either, fish that are planted in lakes are mobile, and not confined to a netpen where the densityes are very high, and a large percentage of the pipulation is diseased, and there is little flow. I'd imagine the mortality rate of fish that are already planted thatc ome down with this disease is actually pretty low because when they catch it they seek out rocky/hard bottomed sections of the lake and attempt to scrape the protazoan from their gills and gillplates by rubbing their head against rocks/substrate.

So I guess to make an incredibly longwinded story short, there isn't really a way for us to tell the mortality rate of fish that catch diseases after transplantation because of the numerous variables. (fisherman, predators, disease, temperature, stress levels, ect. ect.) I will say that at least in the hatchery setting, ick is one of the more survivable diseases that the fish can come down with. This may be because of how easy it is to spot when they come down with it as well though.

I think the lack of holdovers in western washington lakes is largely due to the massive population of people that fish. When we planted trout, they go into lakes hungry, we don't feed them for several days prior to planting to keep the trucks clean, and they will bite just about anything that hits the water. We have to tell people not to throw rocks into our holding ponds because they will eat them, plug up the fish's digestive system, and kill them. There is also a HUGE difference between native trout and hatchery trout, just like salmon. You will hear people tell you that wild salmon fight WAY harder, are larger in general, and appear to be healthier than hatchery salmon. This is all true, because the inbreeding that has been done to sustain the fishery in hatchery settings has diminished the DNA diversity of the species. It is the same with trout. If you want decent sized natives, you have to actually find lakes that have trout in them that are no longer, or sparsely populated by WDFW. But again, given the large number of people in the PNW that fish for trout, this is very hard to come accross. They do exist, but as JoshH stated, they are very elusive, and hard to catch, and they have to be in order to become holdovers!

Sorry for the long-winded post, fish health and disease has always been a passion of mine, I find it very interesting

[TrackerPro16]

This is all very good information! Thanks!

[Fishin'Daze]

Juniah87, JoshH,
Thanks for the feedback. I fish for trout mostly during the Spring, early Summer, Fall and sometimes Winter if cabin fever sets in. I always troll from my boat trying different depths according to water temp and markings on my fish finder. Done this for many years and yes holdovers are alittle harder to locate/bite but again with the amount of plants I would think more would holdover a few years. I can see some lakes get fished heavily but not all do - at least to the point of extremely limiting a chance for larger fish.
So Juniah87 this leads me to a few more questions - if you don't mind.
In my local lakes (Thurston, Mason co) the algae blooms have been getting worse - it seems- over the past 5 years or so. An old friend of mine (Biologist, NY) says most of the algae is caused from nitrates entering the water and the source is most likely fertilizer. I hope I got this right as this was a few years ago we had this discussion.
Does the algae blooms greatly affect the trout? I would think so.
Do Western WA lakes provide enough food for planted trout to grow bigger and survive? I know this would differ from lake to lake but on the average.
Does WFDW plant trout knowing that most won't survive because of fishing pressure, predators and habitat?
As far as bigger trout harder to catch - it again comes down to numbers. A few examples would be some lakes I've fished in other states close to large cities that have healthy populations of large trout and lots of fisherman. We catch nice size trout all the time and yes lots of boats fishing. A lake close to my brothers house (SD) is stocked with Rainbow's once a year. This smallish lake is heavily fished and yet yields large holdovers commonly. These trout aren't natural and face many predators - Walleye and mostly N. Pike. Another example would be in Eastern WA lakes where larger trout are often caught.
With Bass fishing on the down-swing for the most part it doesn't leave much in our local lakes to catch - at least with anything that has any size. I almost always catch-and-release - maybe this would be an answer. Have more lakes designated for catch and release only. With some restrictions as far as no bait, scented bait but not restricted to fly only.
I guess I'll stop as this is looking like a book. Just would like to see more quality fishing in our local lakes.