absolutely the best fishing out there now!! We caught 97 triploids this day. All of the fish we caught ranged from 4 - 7 lbs. For our 4 fish limit we went home with a 6lb, two 7 lb. and a hefty 13lb 8 oz rainbow. The fishing was crazy.
Casting spinners around the shoreline we were getting hits on almost every cast. The fish are actively feeding and all you have to do is to watch for the swirl of a feeding fish and cast in that area and bam!! fish on!!
The weather was sunny with a little fog early in the morning, temps were down there a bit in the morning, 17 degrees when we launched the boat at 9:00and 28 when we took out at sunset, about 4:15. But there was no wind so it was not that bad. Had to dip the poles in the water from time to time to melt out the ice that formed in the eyelets of the rods. One thing, if you go here, make sure that you have a shovel so you can spread sand on the launch if its icy from trailers being taken out of the launch. There is plenty to scoup from under the water line and don't bring salt as it would not be good for the water.
We cut two of the 3 hooks off of the spinners and bent down the barbs so that the fish could be safely released and didn't use a net on the fish we intended to release. Instead I would get the fish to the side of the boat and use needle nose pliers to get the hook out of the fish for a clean release. The 6lb fish we kept had to be kept because he was hooked too deep and was bleeding, otherwise we would have had three 7 lb fish for the day.
We never had so much fun releasing 4, 5, 6 and 7 lb. trout!!
All of our fishing was done in the first 5 miles from Chief Joseph dam. There was no need to go any farther.
The guys trolling seemed to be having a slower time of catching fish. Right now, casting a 1/4 oz. rooster tail spinner in black or green is the ticket on this lake. The fish will follow other colors such as chartreuse or white or brown and will sometimes lightly hit them but the darker colors really triggered the heavy hits. Sometimes the fish would hit the spinner just as it hit the water!!
The deeper water near the shoreline held the largest trout. They were all very hard fighting fish, lots of runs and jumps for a very exciting day. We decided to make this an annual Thanksgiving day tradition. There was only one other boat on the entire lake in our area the whole day!!
Dress warm, bring plenty of hot chocolate and hand warmers and get ready to be completely worn out from catching so many big, heavy hitting, hard fighting fish!! This should keep up until the water temp. starts to cool down and that will send the trout to deeper waters.

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