We read some reports here of some good trout fishing at Diamond Lake so we decided to give it a try. I hadn't been on this lake since I was a kid fishing with my Grandpa in the late 60's.
We launched about 7am on July 3rd and begin working our way along the shoreline to the west from the public launch using a drop shot set up. We each had a hook with a night crawler set about 18 inches off the bottom, and a neutral buoyancy jig head at about 5 feet off the bottom. Sammi used a Berkley minnow on the top hook and I used a purple grub twist tail. It wasn't long before we found the fish in 25 feet of water. About 3/4 of the fish hit our bottom hooks but we caught them on all 3. We both had our limits by 11am. 5 browns and 5 rainbows, all between 9-12 inches.
We went back on the 5th using the same set up but changed our top hooks to the neutral buoyancy jig heads with skirts. We fished the same area along the south shore and found a school of nice fat perch that hit the jigs tipped with 1/2 a night crawler. We ended up with 3 browns, 3 rainbows and 8 perch. The fish were still biting hard at noon but we left due to the heat.
We went back a 3rd time on July 9th to try for some more of those fat perch. We changed over all the hooks to n/b jigs and brown/orange skirts and the purple twist tails tipped with a worm or 1/2 a night crawler. The perch were right where we found them before and they were hungry! They hit the jigs within seconds nearly every time we dropped them down. Neither of us could manage to set the hook but about once out of every 10 hits. They are smart fat perch. But we did manage to get 17 in the boat before the heat got to us at noon time.
Diamond is a very nice lake with a great launch and great fishing. The only negative was a few very rude and unsafe water ski boats. I wish I had seen a sheriffs boat there writing a few tickets

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