Appreciate the report dd. I'm headed over to fish potholes tomorrow. They're going to start charging the canals on Wed. Want to get in one trip this year prior to the water moving.

My secret for catching freshly planted trout (works for the first couple weeks after the plant) is to use small thin bladed spoons with lots of white coloring (with maybe some speckles of red and/or green) on one side. Luhr jensen and a few others make them. I've tried this on freshly planted rainbows in many lakes and it's worked every time but once (Battleground lake about 5 years ago and I think it failed because water was too cold). Freshly planted fish tend to hang around near the surface for the first couple of weeks waiting for someone to feed them so you need to be trolling or casting the spoon very shallow. And I don't know why the "white" coloring is important but I've tried trolling a white tbs and an all silver one at the same time on the same water and the one with some white will out fish the silver one 10 to 1.

Also, don't overlook north windmill lake. I haven't fished the lower lakes for over a decade but used to do very well in north windmill. The rainbows were in the 13 to 14 inch range and would hang just above the weeds on lake bottom. I used to carry in a float tube and work them with sinking fly line and a black woolly bugger. But powerbait off a slip sinker should work just as well. North Windmill is a lot shallower than canal or windmill lake and these are fish that have been around and living off the available forage so they respond to different tactics than the freshly planted bows.

z-delta-D. i think those black, greasy Cormorant birds ate all the trout... Jiggy

I believe they poisoned canal and north windmill last spring. So if they haven't re stocked there was not anything to catch.

They have....It says they planted Canal on the 16th.

We fished Canal last weekend and had similar results. There were four of us fly fishing from float tubes and neither of us had a bite. We figured it was just because the water temp was still between 38 and 40 degrees but if they killed the lake that would make sense. Can you tell me where on the WDFW web site that you found this years stocking information? I have been waiting and waiting for them to post the 2011 trout stocking report and have not seen it on there yet. Is there another place that it can be found besides under the fishing reports, fish stocking and creel reports section?

Here it is.....
http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/plants/weekly/

Thank you. I should have looked under the weekly stocking schedule. Still waiting for the state to release the entire 2011 trout stocking report. Oh well, hopefully it will be up soon.

Thanks again

Appreciate the info on North Windmill fs80. I had heard that canal and windmill were rehabbed but wasn't aware that N. Windmill had been fixed also. In that case one would probably want to wait until '12 or '13 to work that one. Should be some nice fish hanging in there in 2 years though. For some reason everyone has always bypassed north windmill. They drag their float tubes all the way to virgin to catch the dinks there but never stop to work N. Windmill. I was part of that crowd a decade or so ago but one time on my way to virgin there was this huge whiteface bull resting on the trail. I mean this thing looked like it could tip the scales at 3,000 pounds or more. I've never seen a cow that big. Scared the bejeesus out of me. I retreated and decided to work N. Windmill. Did very well and never went all the way to Virgin again.