Putting aside our fly rods and pontoon boats due to warmer weather, water and finicky trout, a partner and I broke out our spinning rods and john boat and headed to Downs for some jumbo perch. What did we end up getting into? A bunch of doggone rainbow trout, exactly what we were trying to avoid!!! In the past, jigs tipped with worms and fished along the pads would produce large perch. This yielded only two perch and one grass pickerel today, along with several other very subtle takes that we missed. It just was not working, so we began fishing our jigs further out from the pads, thinking maybe the perch were deeper. That's where we found Downs' recently planted rainbows, 10 in all with another 4-5 lost. Fish ranged from 11-13", fought well and swam off quickly upon being released despite warmer water. If you just want to catch some trout, go to Downs Lake and hanged jigs tipped with crawler chunks 7-8 feet under a float. It was ridiculous! And we caught all these fish from 2:00-4:00 P.M., during the hottest part of the day. I guess I'm headed to Amber this weekend...the trout are still active!!!

---