Today was my first attempt at Rufus Woods Lake. I left Yakima and drove 170 miles through rain, wind, downpours and more rain. I had heard that the net pens were tricky to find, and that is true. Once I got onto BIA 10, I took two wrong turns before actually finding the fishing grounds. The second wrong turn I took actually led me dead in the center of the net pens, where they harvest/ feed, etc the trout. I was told by the wild life officer that was the wrong spot to park.

That said, I will not say that the net pens are bad by any means. I think the biggest problem is that you have to go through a lot of smaller fish in order to get to the larger ones. I started out with bait (pink power eggs to be exact) and instantly had my first fish, a 15 inch rainbow. Far from a lunker! I then switched over to my modified rooster tails. You now have to use single barbless if you catch and release. I had clipped two hooks off of my roosters and bent the barb in on the remaining hook, in order to catch and release. I figured hopefully this might be productive until I catch a fish worthy of keeping (aka a 5# plus rainbow). I casted time after time, to no avail. Finally I tied on a black jig (I heard black jigs work great). I modified this as well, bending the barb in. This produced nothing. Finally, I tied back on some power eggs, and instantly reeled in a fish the same size as the first. That is the problem with using bait at rufus. Regardless of weather you catch and release or keep your fish, if you are using bait, two fish caught means you are done. So, one hour into my 360 mile (round trip) journey, and I was done. The wild life was hanging around (not that I would have bent the rules). It just seemed like way too long of a journey to bring home two mediocre trout, in the pouring rain to boot. I guess my main problem was I got too hyped about the size of the fish, and expected every fish I caught to be a 3 or 4 pound trout or larger.

One interesting side note, is that the belly of one of my trout was full of gravel. I'm not talking fine grains of pebbles, but decent size gravel. The stomach was quite swollen, and when I pinched it, it felt gritty. I cut it open and there was a bunch of gravel. Hmmmmmm. I attached a picture of the gravel. The dark splotches are the gravel I removed.

Beerman