Combination report for Friday, 5/24 & Sunday, 5/26.

Once again, Park Lake proved to be a fun and challenging fishery. Family and friends camped at the State Park over Memorial Day weekend and a good time was had by all.

Friday, 5/24 was my first, and most productive, fishing day. Was out of bed at 0345 and had the boat in the water at about 0430. Decided to begin by experimenting with a large stick bait off the down rigger in the deep water along Park Lake Rd not far from the launch ramp. Was also flat lining an F5 flatfish plug. Several passes produced no action even though I marked numerous fish and there was some surface activity. After an hour or so I gave up on this and went back to my proven successful methods.

I picked up gear and headed for the southwest end of the lake (closest to Blue lake). Went to a brown craw F5 flatfish on one rod and an olive smile blade fly on the other. Put about 1/2 ounce of weight on both lines and flat lined about 60' - 90' behind the boat.

Ran counter clockwise loops down the highway side of the lake, across the front of the weeds in 15' -20' of water at the shallow end of the lake, up behind the island along the Park Lake Rd side and then back across to the highway side. The weather was intermittently breezy and a bit chilly as the sun was more or less hidden behind high clouds. Put my first fish in the boat on the first pass. This nice 15" rainbow bit the trusty dusty old flatfish plug and went about a pound. A good start for even better things to come.

About 2 passes later the sun broke out and warmed things up a bit. Just as I was approaching the island the pole sporting the flatfish went down. I jumped up, grabbed the pole out of the holder and set the hook. At first the fish seemed to fight like most of the average sized rainbows I've encountered over the years in this lake. However, once I got about half of my line back the fish came to the surface and finned the top of the water and I could see that it was a healthy sized brown trout. In short order it got all ornery and ripped about 40' of line of the drag - GAME ON! It took about 5 minutes to play the fish to the boat and with just me in the boat on Friday morning the net job was a challenge. Each time a took a swing at her she would make a dive under the boat forcing me to put down the net and play her back to the boat side. On the fourth pass I finally got her head-first into the net and scooped her into the boat with a hoop, a holler, and a sigh of relieved satisfaction! What a prize at 22" and pushing 3 pounds - my personal best brownie. A couple more hours of fishing produced two more rainbows. One at about 13.75" that went into the box and another 15" that went back in the lake to grow bigger! Headed back to camp by about 1000 in time to get some breakfast leftovers.

Sunday morning I got a little later start but had all of the gear rigged form previous days so I was fishing by about 0530. Went straight to the southwest end of the lake on this day and started trolling the same pattern that had produced for me on Friday. The sunrise was absolutely glorious with much less cloud cover and mostly calm waters so I snapped several dozen photos with my camera and phone over the 1/2 hour or so that the sun was in close proximity to the horizon. Fishing was much slower on Sunday and I worked my way through just about every piece of trolling gear imaginable working to induce a bite from the fish that were prevalent on my fish finder and working the surface but were otherwise ignoring my offerings. I had one good hard take down while I was baiting my other rod but by the time I grabbed the rod and went to set the hook all that was left was a mighty swirl on the surface about 75' behind the boat. On another pass of the weed bed I thought my brown trout colored hot shot had become fouled so I picked up the pole and took about two turns of the handle to retrieve the lure and a rainbow finally jumped on it. A 14" fish finally kicked the skunk out of my boat for the day.

I continued to trade out rods and gear and eventually worked my back to the brown craw flatfish (F5). As I headed from the weed bed toward the island on one pass I sensed that the flatfish had snagged some weeds so I reeled it in and removed the green goo. I cast the plug out at about a 60 degree angle from the boat and pulled about 40' - 50' of additional line out before I closed the bail and returned the rod to the holder. No sooner had I returned to my seat and the line began to straighten out then it get absolutely buried. This fish immediately departs with about 30' of line and heads across the back of the boat crossing under my other line. I get the pole under my other pole and work the fish over to the other side of the boat and got about 20' of line back. At this point the fish digs in and charges hard for the shallows toward shore. He steadily pulled another 70' of line off the reel easy as you please. Then just as quickly as he bit he rolled or twisted and shook the hook. By the way this fish took down the plug and the ease with which he peeled line off the drag I have no doubt that he was bigger by a significant amount than the brown I hooked on Friday, but I never got a look at him. Of course, this was disappointing but that's fishing. I suppose I'll have to go back and get him when he's even bigger.

Overall I hooked about 7 fish over the course of the two days fishing, landed 5 and kept 4. While the quantity of fish was no better than average the quality of these fish continues to impress me. In the end I'd say use anything in the box so long as it's a brown plug! Best trolling speed seemed to be 1.2 - 1.4. The idle on my trolling motor was set a bit high making it difficult to maintain a good trolling speed (especially going with the wind). I think if I had adjusted the low idle sooner I may have improved my hook-up ratio.

Good luck and tight lines!

Fish Dawg

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