I have been to Downs Lake three times now. Once as a kid with my dad, earlier this season, and again today. The lake itself is coverd probably close to 80% with lilypads, and there is a 'trail' that has to be followed in order to get to open water on the other side of the lake. The lake is never deeper than 16'. Lots of people go for the blue gill, crappie, and bass but I have never had luck trying to catch these fish. There is a $6.00 launch fee for the only launch on the lake that is mediocre. The launch is ravaged with milfoil, lilypad floaties, and a plethura of yellowjackets. If you plan on hitting more than one lake in a day, be sure to hit this one last because you will definitely have to spray off your boat and de-weed your trailer after leaving this lake.
We had success here earlier in the season, in the last week of June. On that trip, red wedding rings with worms were knocking them dead. We landed approximately 30-35 fish, both Rainbow and Tiger Trout.
Back to today's trip, we did absolutely horrible. The fish finder was marking a lot of fish in the 6'-9' depth, but none were biting. We trolled using everything in our arsenal which resulted in only a few bites and landing one average sized Crappie. Again, we caught a Crappie while trolling! I think the reason why it because I was using a light brown wedding ring I usually use for Walleye. Talking to a couple of other boats they had worse luck than us, no bites all day. The great thing about this lake is there are absolutely no pleasure boaters and the lack of any other boats in general make for a less stressful trip. Unless you go there for the warm water species, I think that the best chance for success is to be on this lake before July and troll the open water using wedding rings and worms. Hope this helps.

Anglinarcher

8/17/2009 7:07:00 PM

This time of year the trout are really stressed due to the warm water there - I would ignore them. Fishing in the channel that you launch in, using worms with no weight, on the bottom, should land you all the perch you can fillet, usually large ones. The Bass are going to be mostly top water fish, on the edge of the pads and over the weeds. Slop Frogs are my suggestion, and later in the day is better. As for the yellow jackets, they seem to be everywhere this year - hate those suckers.

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