Took my wife, Boni, to Blackman's Lake to fish for Rainbow Trout. Forecast was for a dry, pleasant day, so a morning out was in order. We arrived at Hilltop Park about 5:45 AM and went down to the long, southernmost pier. We were the first ones at the park. Temp at the outset was a brisk 45 degrees... sky was low with cloud cover. Water temp at 20' off the end of the pier was 56 degrees. Lines were in the water by 6:00. Began the day with one rig with fl. orange Power Eggs (5' leader) and Boni and I both fished worms under a float. Fish were quite active at the surface, so I anticipated good action on the floats... I was wrong! For the first two hours we had a couple of bites on the worms, floats "bobbled", even were pulled under the surface, but could get no hook-ups. Breeze picked up by 7:00 and made fishing the floats more difficult. I switched up the PE presentation several times to other color combinations, but not a hit on that rig. I felt confident in the 5' leader length, as the fish were so active at the surface, but not a bite. At about 8:30 I tried another change of PE color, this time green (Lemon Lime)... Bingo!! At 8:45, I had my first very hard hit, the rod tip on my UL 8 1/2' Temple Fork rod doubled over and I was into a good fish. In time I brought to the net (handled expertly by Boni... she had a good teacher!) a beautiful, chunky Rainbow of 13". Another strong hit twenty minutes later and another good Rainbow let me know that we were in the game. I quickly (well, honestly, I don't do much "quickly" anymore!) changed Boni's rig to PEs on a 6' leader. Within fifteen minutes she landed her first. The rest of the morning was pretty consistent action... we missed a few, had some long range releases on several, but I landed my fifth Rainbow by 11:45, and Boni landed her fifth a bit after noon. We ended the day with ten great Rainbows, three of them in the 13" range (Boni caught the largest, at 13 1/2"... she always does!). The smallest was 11 1/2".
Had a total of seven other fishermen at the Hilltop piers ... they came and left with no fish that I saw caught (they should have asked us, would gladly share our success). Saw a number of fishermen at the WDFW launch across the lake, but no idea if they were successful. Saw a total of three small boats launched, saw one fish caught as one boat passed in front of us, they were trolling gang trolls with worms.
Upon cleaning the fish, I found what I suspected in eight of the fish... their stomachs were bulging with a dark green plankton like substance that I have never been able to specifically identify... even phone calls to the WDFW biologist was no help. Don't know if the stuff is plant or animal, but every Spring I encounter this as the basic food the Rainbows gorge themselves on. The dark green PE is a reasonable approximation of the stuff. Also found a good number of midge larvae and pupae (chironomids) in their stomachs as well.
Had an awesome morning out with my wife, got to observe lots of waterfowl, a Canada Goose family with twelve new hatchlings, saw the Bald Eagle pair nesting in the Hilltop Douglas Firs... smoked a couple of bowl fulls of my favorite pipe tobacco and went home with a mess of trout. Won't be long and I'll have a smoker full. Can't do much better than that! PTL!