First time on this great lake. It's Memorial Day weekend, raining cats and dogs in Newport where we've parked the fifth wheel at Old American Kampground. My soulmate and I decided to take a drive to Bead lake to try out our Seaeagle Foldcat inflatable pontoon boat (great boat for the RV'er) which has a MinnKota 40 lb. thrust motor. Unfortunately we arrived to late to get into the very limited parking area (6 slots I think) and actually could not readily locate the road to the boat ramp because the vehicles were hidding it. 8P
So, we went back down Bead lake road to the Marshall lake junction, hooked a hard left, and after a pleasant little drive through the clouds arrived at the resort. Driving through the resort brings you to the well maintained Public launch.
After asking the obligatory questions about "having any luck", "what ya us'n", etc. one of the lake hommies stated that anything orange will net results. We launched the pontoon thingy and set sail (figuratively speaking of course). After cruising around the bay just to the right of the launch to check motor, locator and stuff we set the anchor about 100 yards directly out from the public launch in glass smooth water. Depth 80', water temperature 60 degrees read from the transducer mounted to the bottom of the MinnKota about 20" down.
I loaded a wedding ring with half a worm, cast out about 30 yards, let it settle about 10 seconds, started reeling in just fast enough to induce the spin, the clouds parted, sunlight lit my face....WHAM. My pole tip snaped over, almost tearing it out of my grip. Wow, the hommies stated that the trout were no bigger than about 9" to 11", but what do they know right? Well, they were right of course, but these little buggers must be on steroids. I caught and released after almost every cast, and had a truely great day for the 3-4 hours we spent there. Diffinately going back to see what its like this summer.

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