Met Bel83 (Justin) at the Pine Lake launch at 5:45AM. We fished from that time until 9:00AM when he needed to leave. I caught about 8 and Justin caught about 10 before he left. I’m so glad he was able to get out and catch some fish after going skunked from the dock days before (we’ve all been there at it’s not fun). It was great to help him get out on the water and off the dock. Anyways, fish for us were small in the morning, and got larger in the afternoon (I found this interesting). For us, 7-10” was about it. When Justin left at 9:00AM, I ran into “urbanangler” (Eric) out there. He’s a very nice guy, and has a sweet set-up with his boat. He was trolling his homemade special wedding ring and doing quite well! I went to buggers after Bel83 (Justin) left, (olive, size 10) and nailed 7 bows from 9AM till 12PM with most in that 12-14 range. I had fished some buggers with him as well, but went between that and my frog needlefish size 2. When I switched over and used an olive bugger as my first fly (size 10) and a dropper off that (size 6 olive bugger) that was the ticket -- they loved the trailing olive bugger size 6. One of my fish caught at 11:00AM went 14” and pulled out a good amount of line. The next three fish I caught were all 13" (see Hot Spots when available). All fish were released safely and not removed from the water. I first started out with a frog needlefish/fly combo and caught my first 8 that way with Justin as I previously mentioned. Justin had on a sweet rainbow Rapala with pinched-barbs I gave to him which was lost (huge smack and the lure was bite off from the 4lb test line) and that was crazy…reeled in and lost a nice Rapala and maybe a huge fish (so if anyone catches a large fish with a rainbow Rapala in its mouth, please PM me, thanks). It was all good though because when he left I busted the fly rod out and went to work. Trolled alongside “urban” for probably 2 hours and chatted a good amount. Between us we had a fish on every 20 minutes or so it seemed. The fish were striking very “soft” and would just “nip” at the flies so a good hook set was required. The fish ran deep today from about 10 to 20 feet down. Most our fish were caught in deeper water. I couldn’t have asked for a better day to fish Pine Lake. So in total I caught and released about 15 bows and Justin about 10. Urban got his share too, around 7-8 bows on his awesome spinner (just a sweet lure) and he C&R’d all his fish as well – so about 30 fish are swimming free let’s hope (no bleeders this time – thankfully). Water temperature is warming up, as “urban’s” gauge was reading 55-57F. It was a fun, fun day and fishing along side “urban” = good times. Attached are some pictures for the trip, and I’ll add some “Hot Spots” too (this feature should be up in a month or so). No browns this time, but that should come later! Tight Lines “WashingtonLakers” I'm out for that 39" ling tomorrow in Area 10. -- KTK

---