Day Two of our short Memorial Day trip had us fishing at Merwin. We ate in at the hotel and drove the 17 miles to Merwin. Arriving at 7:30am I was a bit surprised to see only 8-9 rigs in the parking lot. I knew the lake had been fishing slow but this was still surprising. In any case, we were up for a pleasant morning of fishing and the weather had taken a turn to the better, warmer and sunny.

We started trolling just down from the boat launch heading down lake to the dam. Four rods of course, two on riggers targeting (the many) nice marks I was seeing at 30-45 feet and two leaded lines. Trolling speed was set at 1.1 to 1.4, using my I-troll to give periodic speed bursts to try to trigger bites, which worked pretty good on Yale yesterday. New to my boat is an ulterra bow mount trolling motor which is I must say a great upgrade! Much better boat control and the ability to set a course and forget it takes trolling to another level. No more racing to the steering wheel as the boat make a 180. Just set it and fish. Plus, bonus, the course correction periodically gave little nudging turns, never a bad thing when trolling.

We had no action and I was beginning to think it was a nice day for a boat ride until at 9am the riggers started hitting. The fish I saw at 30-45 feet (and there are a lot of them) slowly turned on. I had set up a variation on the brads kokanee cut-plug, using an old goat lure instead with beads spacing to dual hooks. This set up proved to out-fish the brads plugs 4-1. I’m sold.

The fish, again, were running small, although a tad bigger than Yale at 11-11.5” with our big fish coming in at a nice 13.5”. Still, not the Merwin fish I’ve been used to seeing. Anyway, we put away the leaded-line rods and focused on the riggers. By the end of out day (noon) we had 6 in the boat.

Add to yesterday’s total that gave us 19 for the weekend. Not great, not bad, and enough for the smoker. The day was so nice, and at noon the water skiers came out so it was time to come in.

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