I live near Crabapple Lake so I get there once in a while mainly to swim in the warmer summer weather. I've caught a good number of average size trout there over the years but summer fishing is pretty slow on this lake. Recently, I heard rumors of some larger bows coming out of the lake recently, from people I met at the ramp while swimming. They only plant small bows at 5 fish per pound in Crabapple so I just figured these were just fish stories.

I got bored yesterday evening so I decided to waste the evening fishing on Crabapple. When I got to the lake just after 6pm, there was a bunch of kids swimming and several people fishing from shore. I pushed them aside and put in my little boat. I first tried a Doc Spratley on sinking line weighted with a couple split shot. My new cheapo sounder showed that the fish were about 15' below the surface. So I put away the fly pole and put on a wedding ring with small set of pop gear and ran out 26' of weighted line trying to get it down to where the fish were showing on the sounder. After about 20 minutes I had a huge hit in 36' of water straight off the ramp that took almost ten minutes to bring in. It was a fat 18" bow weighing 2 1/2 lb. The color was very bright and the shape looked more like a small salmon. I later caught a couple of the average odd colored 10" - 11" bows, that live in Crabapple, and went home. In all I had a great time and caught a rumor that appeared to be an old hold over.

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