This was my first season opener at Mineral Lake and boy am I glad I went! We got to the lake at 5:30am and there was already a line to get boats at the resort, glad I reserved mine. We were on the water by 6:20 and decided to troll around to see what the fish wanted. My friend started with a wedding ring with a worm and had the first keeper on ice within 5 minutes. I had a couple hits on the Rebel crawfish I was running but missed the hookup so I changed to a Thomas Buoyant Rainbow Trout lure which has given me good results in the past. Apparently that was the ticket this day because I had a fish in the box within 2 minutes of putting it in the water.

My friend had two more keepers within 15 more minutes so he decided to leave the worm off the wedding ring so he didn't limit out too quickly. After he got his second keeper I hooked what felt like a clump of weeds at first but when I got it close to the boat it started putting up a fight. A couple minutes later I have the biggest trout I've ever caught in the boat, 19" long and 2.15lbs. Woohoo! We trolled around the lake catching and releasing anything under 14" and decided to try some bottom fishing in a cove to preserve our battery. While my friend rigged up a setup I decided to do some casting with the same lure I had been trolling. First cast, three cranks, fish on! I reel in a 10" rainbow. Second cast, same thing. This goes on six times in a row! I've never seen anything like it. We sat there for about 20 minutes and I caught and release 20-25 fish ranging from 9-13" while the several boats anchored around us caught maybe 3 fished combined.

We decided to go back to trolling the same area we had caught the bigger fish and once again had success. At this point we both have 3 fish on ice that are 14" or larger. As we're weaving through boats I hook what feels like a snag except that my line is moving left to right. As I reel and keep tension on the line I can tell this is the biggest trout of my life, mind you I already had the biggest one in the boat. The fish surfaces 30 ft away and it is a MONSTER. The fight continues and my friend has the net extended as far out as he can and the fish is 2ft away from the net when it shakes it's head and swims away....NOOOO!!!! This beast was easily 5+ pounds, the kind that haunts your dreams, but also keeps you coming back for more.

I ended up landing another keeper, 16 inches, and my friend keeps another one when the battery goes out so we row back to the dock each with 4 on ice. This was easily the best day of fishing I've ever had. I caught and released 30+ fish, caught the largest trout of my life, and hooked a trophy size fish. It got pretty windy and rained a bit but that didn't matter....we were catching. I'll be back out there this weekend to try and catch the one that got away.

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