Glad to have an extra fishing day this year. I had a really good morning at Blue lake. Fished from 6:45-8:30 and caught 5 trout for dinner. Nice size range of fish for fish sticks for the grownups and kids. Temperature of both air and water was upper 30's. It was really calm for about 1/2 an hour and by 8:30 the cold wind was blowing 15-20mph. The campgrounds were about half full, but the lake was not very crowded. People were at all 3 lower lakes.
Today I fished with a slip bobber rig, set at 4' early and to 6' by the last fish. I find this works for both worms and power bait. Today I changed from the size 8 Eagle Claw bait-holders I've been using for 50 years to a size 8 Gamagatsu circle hook. For stocker trout I intend to eat I usually just let them play with it until I think they have swallowed it. I then extract the hook from the gullet when I break the neck to bleed it. Using these hooks today I noticed no difference in performance, I hooked 50% of the bites, but today I got 4 out of 5 in the mouth, one fish swallowed a worm. I find a full crawler too much so I fished 1/2 of one. The white half did better than the collared end. Once they got really cold and stopped moving it was time to change. I caught 3 on this rig. I then switched to a white power eggs, pegged about 3 widths above the hook. This worked just as well as the worms. I used my hydrofloat line today, I liked the way I could control it, especially in the wind. It didn't sink, even in the high wind, like mono does.
Can't wait 'till dinner, and scraps for the vegetable garden compost pile.

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