My friend and I fished Fishtrap on Saturday and Sunday. One year ago we fished it on the opener and witnessed some of the poorest fishing in recent memory. This year I was all set to hit Badger on the opener but my friend Randy convinced me to give Fishtrap one more try. As we pulled out of the boat launch I have to admit I really didn't feel like this lake was going to be a producer , but that all changed when my friend got his first strike about 200 yards from the launch. Judging by the arc in his rod I figured it was something decent. He fought it for several minutes until I was able to get it netted. We busted out the digital scale and the lunker weighed in at 5 lbs. At that point I told him I guess we won't be heading to Badger. We both were catching fish at a rapid rate but for some reason I continued to get the planters while he hit the triploids and the big boys. Finally on the 20th fish I hooked , I finally hauled in a triploid. By this time Randy had landed a 4.5 lb and two other fish that weighed in at over 3 lbs. At this point I decided to switch up colors and tossed out a frog pattern flatfish it received an immediate response and I finally hooked up with a nice bow. It weighed in at 3.8 lbs. To finish out the stringer on the opener I hooked one more fish that weighed in at 3 lbs. We caught a total of 61 fish that morning keeping are limit of triploids and lunkers. Before I made my 5 hour drive back home we wanted to take one more shot at the lake the following day. We rolled in at about 7 and planned on fishing until around 9:30. As we put in we realized that we had forgot the most important item other than a pole. We didn't have our net. I told him great now how are we going to get a big fish in the boat if we hook one. He assured me that if we hooked one he would find a way to get it in the boat. We started our troll and just like the day before he hooked into a decent fish right out of the gate. It was a triploid and he was able to just pull it up and get it into the boat. Several minutes later I hooked into a little heavier fish. Once we got a look at it he told me I was going to have to tire it out if I wanted to have any chance of getting it in. He made several attempts of grabbing it but each time the fish saw his hands it would make a run. I didn't see any way we were going to get this fish out of the water. But as he always does my friend devised a plan. He took my line with one hand and faced the fish away from the boat , he was then able to get some fingers into its gills and hoist it up out of the water. We put it on the scale and it checked in at 5.1 lbs. We fished assorted colors of flatfish and caught fish on frog , perch , red & black , gold & black , and yellow. We caught 29 fish between us on the second day and kept 7. All in all this trip went down as the best one on record. One thing I do know is that I will be making another journey to the eastside next year. Although it will be hard to ever top the big bows we hauled in this year.

---