First time to ever fish Badger but took a friend who fishes it regularly and knows the lake well. I was concerned with the barometric pressure change just coming off Tuesday's storm, but we went anyway. With sunny skies and a light breeze to greet us, it would be a nice day on the water no matter what. Our target was the larger cutthroat Badger is known for, but we weren't able to entice them to strike.

We started our troll right out from the launch and headed toward the northeast end of the lake. I sent two rigs out (two rod endorsement), one with a brass/orange Dick Nite 150' back and the other with a Rip'n Minnow plug at 190' back. My friend was trolling with fly out 3 colors.

It was about 30 minutes later when I hooked one on the Dick Nite, a small rainbow of about 11" which I released. We continued trolling, and my friend had a hit on a fly but it didn't stick. A short while later I hooked up again, another small rainbow, but this time even smaller, maybe 8". Soon we were at the northeast end where we made a turn above the "island" as my friend called it, and headed back along the opposite shore. I hooked another 11" rainbow, this time in the eye, so it went in the cooler.

We then hit a lull in the activity, and I decided to change out the Rip'n Minnow for a Krokodile and my friend changed his fly for Roy Self spoon. We continued our trolling pattern until early afternoon with marginal success. I caught one small 8" cutthroat which was released to grow bigger and two more small rainbow that were too badly hooked to release. My friend caught a couple small rainbow as well, all released. We called it a day shortly after 2pm and more than hour of no activity.

Water surface temp was 68° and we varied trolling speed from about .8mph - 2.0mph. We both used leaded line, mine out 150' and my friend out 3 colors. I also trolled with mono and ran it from 175' to 190' back. We fished unscented, artificial lures, and all unharmed fish were released.

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