I got on the water at Lake Offut by 2:30pm and it was sunny, although a bit choppy and windy. I had my girl with me and we fished off the bottom for about an hour and a half on the SW side of the lake and netted five cookie-cutter hatchery plants. When it slowed down a bit we decided to troll the south end of the lake and had no bites until getting back to the SW side again when my girl landed a nice size, maybe 2lb fish. We kept at it on that side for another hour despite the sun falling behind the trees and the wind picking up even more. At about 5:30 I got a great strike and the fish immediately stated peeling line off towards shore. She made three more great runs before we got her in the net. I’ve caught some of the 4lb plants up at Beaver Lake and this was a comparably sized fish and possibly my personal best rainbow trout…definitely top 3. A total blast on ultra-light gear too. She’s a likely holdover fish despite WDFW planting some big ones last week as and this one was too colored to have just left the pens. I sent her back into the drink as she was full of eggs and we headed back in. We landed eight total, with the biggest biting trolled green body/brass spoon wedding rings tipped with power bait. These had the tiniest size 10 hooks on them and I was pretty skeptical about their ability to hold larger fish, but they worked.

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