So I hit Green Lake on saturday and got skunked. I had a few follows but no hits. My revenge never took place :(

I had the day off again today for paid holiday so I decided to hit Green Lake again. I was desperate for a fish so that I could redeem myself from the previous skunk. Within the first 30 minutes, I began experimenting with different types of crankbaits. I was using a mid-deep diving jerkbait. I was twitching it along and I am watching my bait as it gets close and then another monster brown comes out of nowhere like a bullet and lunges at my bait! Unfortunately, this happened so fast and he lunged at it just as I was jerking it so he completely missed my lure. Then he darted off super fast into the deep. It was almost like the trout felt embarassed and ran away LOL. Usually when that happens to me, the trout sticks around and will take a few more swipes or at least patrol the general area for a few seconds before casually swimming off. But this trout disappeared before you could blink.

I began throwing my usual lures in my usual spots and nothing was happening. So I decided to think outside the box like I tend to frequently do. I thought to myself, why not try to work some of my baits in extremely unorthodox ways to see if that will trigger the fish into biting? So I tie on one of my crankbaits and begin working it in an unusual fashion. One that I haven't even really heard of anyone doing. I keep at this for about half an hour or so. I'm making a ton of casts in all directions while trying out this method.

After a while, I'm thrown off guard when I get a really solid hit! I set the hook and it's fish on! I respooled my curado with 8 lb fluorocarbon and had the drag tuned pretty well so that if a fish wanted to run it could but also so that it was tight enough to keep good pressure on the fish. The first thing I noticed was that this fish was not fighting like your typical brown trout. Typically as soon as you set the hook on a brown it starst to head shake violently before making it's runs and fighting. This fish didn't really start off with many head shakes other than a couple quick shakes. Also this fish was trying to stick close to the bottom. It had my 7' 5" Powell Max Glass Crankbait Rod bowed over and was pulling really hard. I started to fight the fish on and it peels a bit of drag but not too much. A lot of my cranks of the reel were just gaining 0 line. As I gain line on the fish and it approaches the dock, it darts straight under the dock. I only caught a quick glimpse of the fish beforehand and it was pretty bright. I thought to myself that this couldn't be a rainbow because I have never caught rainbows on this particular crankbait before.

But I pull it from under the dock and flip it up. Sure enough, it was a rainbow trout! And it was quite a beast of a rainbow! By beast I mean ultra thick and ultra fat for it's length. The fish came in at just 15" but weighed 1 lb 6 oz. For inch to lb ratio, this fish was definitely a lot heavier than the browns I have been catching. If you look at this fish, it's a chunky fish and not shaped like the typicaly streamlined and skinny rainbows. This fish had some shoulders and a good girth all around. This would have made an awesome meal but I let her go. A mother and her son walked over and asked if they could see the fish. I said sure and they got a close up look at it and asked what kind of fish it was. I told them it was a rainbow trout and they said it was a beautiful fish. They seemed concerned that keeping it out of the water momentarily would kill it but I assured them that it was fine. As soon as the fish hit the water it swam off like a champ.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that for about 2 hours, I was too stubborn to go back to my car in the light rain to get my frogg toggs. After that fish, the rain had soaked through my jacket and started to soak into my hoodie so I decided to head to my car and put on my rain gear. I fished for about hour or two and had 3 follows but no hits. All 3 of the fish were pretty decent big browns. I'd say that all 3 were easily in the 2 lb range. Just about as big as the brown that Ryan caught recently. It was super disappointing but I was just glad that I got the skunk off of my hands.

Oh yeah, and I just realized that this is my first ever Green Lake Rainbow Trout. And it was a beauty :)

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