Wow, what a glorious, awesome day on Lake Ballinger! Arrived at 5:30AM, first on the pier. Lake was absolutely placid, few fish rising, with wispy fog coming off the water. Water temp. at 10' was 71 degrees... was worried that it was just too warm for good fishing. Ten minutes in, had my first fish to the pier, then lost one fifteen minutes later. Friend Pete showed up at 6:30, then several others followed. Caught second fish about 7:30... a few bites... a third at about 8:00 (13" Rainbow). Using chartreuse Power Eggs, with a couple fl.yellow EZ eggs above the hook (added floatation)... 8' to 10' leaders to keep bait off the bottom. On third fish, I had changed up to a Power Bait chartreuse worm, produced the largest fish I caught. About 8:30 caught fourth fish on the worm.
To this point, only one other fish caught on the pier. Friend Pete who is always the trendsetter on the pier was having a dismal day, a few bites, but that was all... sadly, he was unable to purchase his all important watermellon Trident chewing gum (lucky gum) the night before, so his mojo was definitely off!! By this time there were 6 or so fishermen on the pier. All morning long we had observed a rather large fish thrashing on the lake's surface, not far from where we were fishing... from what we could tell, a 3' to 4' frond of aquatic plant was trailing him wherever he went. The resident eagle made 5 or 6 attempts to pluck the fish from the lake, but always came up empty. The eagle was definitely cranky and wanting to eat something... made several attacks on the flock of ducks near the shoreline... caused quite a ruckus each time.
Shortly after landing my fourth trout, I cast out and watched my line settle. A couple of minutes later, I saw the belly of my line moving to the left, but the terminal end was still straight out!?? As my line kept moving to the left, I began to reel it in and felt the distinct but subtle tugging of a fish on the line. Then, the fish broke water and was putting on a aerial display... something was really weird, because my terminal tackle was still far out from the pier. Then. all of a sudden all hexx broke loose... the eagle appeared out of no-where and hit the water right in front of us all... fish in the air, eagle on the water... everyone shouting and laughing... somehow the eagle missed, and I reeled in the fish and was able to net it... then I reeled in my line! What had happened, was the fish we had seen earlier, was trailing 4' to 5' of someone's fishing line, which had become wrapped around an aquatic plant and the fish was dragging all this stuff around the lake. Somehow the fish had crossed my line and had become seriously wrapped around it. After reeling it in, I still had 150' of my line to reel in.
I was pretty much in shock as I put the 13" trout on my stringer and didn't take the time to closely examine the fish then. I was done fishing at 9:00AM. Stayed to offer encouragement to the other fishers, but nothing more was caught before I left the lake at 10:00. It wasn't until I began to clean the fish at home that I looked more closely at the final fish I had landed. It was clearly a Cutthroat, not a Rainbow. It had the clearly visible orange slash under the jaw, the distinct jaw line, and upon cleaning, I found two developing skeins of eggs (definitely not hatchery fish). All in all, a wonderful morning with lots of fantastic memories. Thanks Pete and the others who shared the morning with me. Tight lines all!
(pics of Pete, the eagle in a nearby tree being harassed by a crow, the fish!)

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