Started off the morning trolling a spinning orange squid. 45 mins into it and not a single bite. By now, I'm near an area where I've caught a few bass in the past. So I put the trolling rod down and start fan casting with crank and spinnerbait in the shallow areas. No follows or bite. I did have 1 baby LMB hit my line at where it enters the water thinking it's a bug or something.

I start moving out deeper and marking lots of fish hugging the bottom in 35-40' of water. I also see larger fish suspended above or near the bottom. I tried deep cranking but wasn't getting deep enough I guess. So I threw a heavy football jig. Start to get small nips. I'm betting they are perch. Toss around the area without much success so I bring out the dropshot rod. Didn't take long for fish on. And I was right, they are perch! But they were all nice perch in the 10" range. I caught a handful of them before I decided to go back to trolling.

I switch out to a red wedding ring. After about 20 mins, I get my first bite, but didn't stick. 10 mins later, I get a solid bite and fish on!
14" trout or possibly a kokanee. It looked a little bit different than either one to me...

I keep going and keep getting bites. My hookup and catch ratio is poor. Very poor. I had a few hookups where I lost it halfway to the boat. But the majority of my bites just dont stick on the wedding ring.

Near the end of my day, I got a BIG bite. It was enough to pull a little bit of drag. This one, I was able to reel it up to the side of the boat. It looked to be about a 18-20" rainbow. Anyways, it was making multiple jumps around the boat. Then it made 1 last leap towards the rear and hits the motor.... Next thing I know, the fish is gone and so is my wedding ring!!!! *sigh*

Luckily, I had another red one in my tacklebox from a long time ago, so I re-tied it on. Instead of using the stock hook this time, I tied on a size #6 Gama octopus hook hoping it would improve my catch ratio. Well after a couple of mins, I got another strike, but of course, the fish didn't stick.. AAAHHHHH

The double hook rigs seem to work fine. So far, I've had a higher than 50% hookup ratio. The single hook wedding rings, I'm maybe at 20% hookups.


The fish won the battles today.

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