a HUGE thank you to papamike for stearing me in the right direction on this lake. I took my 6yr son again promising better fishing than last time. We had rented a boat again from Klink's but this time borrowed my dad's trolling motor (it is an ancient Eska inherited from my grandfather)...I probably row faster than this things max speed. We trolled from the resort along the south side of the lake, lost 3 lurers in the shallows cause Im stupid and didnt think it was as shallow as it was. Anyways, got over to....yep.....the infamous Tree 11 and it was already a little crowed when I got there at 8am. I think there was about 5 other boats in the area when we arrived. We hung back a little more east...about 75 yards, from the tree, and about 30 yards from shore (or so, Im a bad judge of distance).

I switched my son to a powerbait setup using a couple split shot sinkers about 1 foot above a size 10 swivel connected to a size14 brass treble hook w/leader (pre-lined eagle claw brand). Earlier in the year I let him pick out some powerbait which was the orange & green multicolored kind in the nugget variety. I tried casting and retrieving a black & white needle fish which I got a couple bumps on but no hook ups. My son caught the first fish, a nice 10" rainbow. Seeing that, and hearing other people talk of using powerbait, I switched to powerbait myself using the same hook setup. I instead went on Papamike's report and used corn scented powerbait. It wasnt 2 minutes before I hooked a 16" rainbow that gave really good fight. My son then, caught another rainbow at about 8". It slowed for a touch so my song switched to the corn powerbiat and caught another 10" rainbow. We got crowed in a little bit by someone in a inflatable pontoon, and other people were arriving as well but overall most people were respectful and kept a good distance between each other.

Overall I limited out with my last fish being a 15" rainbow (the one with clipped fins in the photo) and my son had gotten bored and stopped fishing after catching his 3rd fish. Course I didnt know he didnt want to fish anymore until his pole tip was bobbing indicating a fish to which he said "I dont want to reel it in, Im done fishing".... I was like WHAT?!?....good thing I have the two pole endorsement and reeled his pole in (counted it toward my limit too). So we have 8 fish in about 3 hours. Not a bad day at all. I told family that my son had stopped fishing because he didnt want to make his ole man sad by outfishing me again for the 2nd time in a row ;)

**NOTE: Please someone refresh my memory and tell me keeping fish with clipped fins is ok because they are hatchery raised fish that are just clipped for research purposes??? lol.

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