Went to see how things were shaping up on a sunny Sunday at Gissberg Ponds. Um, CROWDED, in a word ... pretty much all of the south pond shoreline access was filled with people, with a couple of small boats trolling with apparently little success. People on the shore were getting occasional bites, but nothing too hot. It appeared that at least two or three people on one end of the south pond had two or three small (barely plantable size) rainbows on stringers -- looked like they had probably been there all day ... stuff set-up for the long haul, lounging around. Within five minutes of putting my bait in the water (used Berkley Trout Bites, corn flavor, rubbed with salmon egg flavor Smelly Jelly), I had a teeny rainbow, then no other bites for the rest of my time there. (Arrived at 1:30PM, left at 4:30PM). During this time, the fellow next to me caught two of the teeny trout right around the time I caught mine, then nothing more until I left. According to the 2001 stocking plan, the WDFW was supposed to plant 2500 rainbows/month for March, April, May, and June. HOWEVER, when I found their actual plantings report (when they were still available -- what happened to them??), all I could find for the period of mid-March to late April was fish 1000 planted during the first week of April. If that's true, this place will soon be fished out due to the weekend pressure despite the catches I saw this weekend, admittedly few for amount of fishing going on. We'll see ... I'll get out one of my small boats and try some of the other Snohomish County lakes.

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