I've fished Langlois three times since the opener.

Saturday (the opener) wasn't as busy as I anticipated, probably due to the rainy weather. There were still 12 boats on the water when I arrived at about 11:00am, though. The fishing was predictably very good. I had my first fish on within 30 seconds of wetting my line. While I did try a variety of setups, including spoons, flatfish and a spinner, trolling a fly behind a small dodger on an ultralight rod was the real ticket. I fished about 90 minutes, and landed around 20 fish.

Monday was a much tougher day. I fished in the late afternoon, and spent about four hours to land six fish. Other anglers to whom I spoke reported similarly frustrating results. The same gear that worked like a charm on Saturday didn't seem to appeal to the fish by Monday evening. I tried fishing deeper, where I've had good luck with larger fish in previous seasons, but there was no coaxing the bigger fish out of their haunts.

Tuesday night was much better. Because Monday had been so slow, I tried trolling a dodger and Power Bait Mouse Tails in white/bubblegum. They were very effective, but I stopped using them almost immediately because two of the first three I caught took the hook really deeply. I ended up taking those fish home. That experience has convinced me not to use any kind of bait in those situations unless I'm prepared to harvest every fish. Besides, using bait severely limits your fishing, since every fish caught - whether released or not - counts against your daily limit.

The biggest fish of the day found its way into my boat without me ever hooking it. I ended up snagging a rat's nest of some else's broken off hi-vis yellow line, and there was a 14" rainbow still attached. I had to haul it in by hand since it was about 12 feet behind my dodger. That fish ended up going home with me, too, because he was pretty much turned inside out - the hook was that far down his throat.

Tuesday ended up being another 20 fish outing. The hot spot was the shoreline in the corner near the Girl Scout boat/canoe dock.

If you told me I could only have one setup to fish any of the lowland lakes, it would be the green UV dodger by Rocky Mountain, and an Olive Willy. (Use the one with the small glass bead, not the large bead or the red rabbit hair.) Second place honors would be split between a black bead-head bugger with some flash, and a Thin Mint. I've fished with that particular type of dodger for several seasons there, until the dodger was so beat up the finish came off. I looked all over for another one - I don't remember where I got the first one - and finally found one yesterday at Dick's Sporting Goods, of all places. Second choice on the dodgers would be a Dick Nite in 50/50. The Dick Nite seems to run a little deeper, though, and I think the fish are still staying pretty high.

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