I made an executive decision and took today off specifically to fish somewhere different. I didn't go too wild. In fact, I pretty much just went across the street from where I do the vast majority of my fishing. I went all the way to Lake Shoecraft :) I've been wanting to go there and give the lake an honest effort, but it is so hard to leave the quality fish at Goodwin.

I launched at about 7:30 this morning. I was the only soul on the lake today. It's a somewhat tricky launch. You basically launch into the creek that runs between Goodwin and Shoecraft. It's a small run, but its still fairly shallow. I wouldn't get too exotic with what you try launching there.

I started one line with my standard Mack's Dodger, 16 inches of leader to a green Doc Spratley fly, 15 feet down. The other line I wanted to run through some Elgin Fishing God's Tooth Spoons and see if I couldn't come up with a pattern that worked. I was running these at 10 feet down. As I was cycling though the God's Tooth Spoons hunting for a pattern the fish would hit on, I got on and landed 3 on the Doc Spratley. I had gone through about 5 patterns by the time I put on the brown trout pattern. Not 30 seconds in the water and the downrigger started bouncing. This pretty much repeated itself over and over. I began to catch and release the fish as they were coming fast. One time as I was getting ready to put the line in the clip a fish actually took the spoon off the surface, which surprised my with the surface temp being 71 today.

At the end of the day I probably caught and released 12-15 fish, and kept my 5 for the smoker. Both set up worked well, but the God's Tooth was the winner by about 3 to 1, and it took me about an hour to get to that pattern. Fish were decent. all went 13-14 inches. Flesh on the fish was a decent shade of orange. Not the deep red of the Goodwin fish, but definitely a decent quality trout. Majority of the fish I was marking between 10-20 feet, so I fished 10-15 feet down. Best speed hovered around 1.5mph

Video shows the fish I took home today, 1 I released.