We arrived at American Lake a little later than I normally like. One of my buddies was moaning at the fact that we were meeting at 8am at another friends house near the lake and how early that was. It was around two to three hours later than I normally arrive at most lakes but I don't mind rising at dark thirty and got a laugh at what he thought was early. The lake had a slight breeze on it when we first arrived and by the time we launched the boat and were ready to troll it was around 8:45. By this time the wind was pretty blustery making it difficult to troll but we still managed. I was after the Kokes there so I started with a small doger and wedding ring tipped with maggots that normally is pretty effective there . My buddy Roger was using Cowbells and a wedding ring minus the spinner that got lost and he did not notice this fact until he landed his first trout. He tipped his setup with several pieces of worms. My other buddy Tim (Mr. 8am is too early) was using a small doger and wedding ring tipped with worms. After trolling for the first half an hour my buddy Roger landed the first fish around 10inch fiesty rainbow. This is when I noticed that his spinner was missing from his wedding ring. I then proceeded to proclaim that in order to catch more fish and get more hits you have to have the spinner on the wedding ring. Of course he shrugged it off probably do more to laziness and to spite me. Over the next hour he landed eight fish letting the smaller ones go. Both Tim and I kept changing setups due to are not even getting bites. Over the next couple of hours of changing and watching him land fish, even handing the rod over to Tim (Mr. Complainer now, about not being any fish here as serveral jumped around us) I did not have cowbells so I tried couple other flasher setups with zero results. Feeling desperation I put back on the doger and took the spinner off the wedding ring and put on serveral pieces of worm making a big gaudy clump of dangling worms. I then proceeded to land two trout in the next twenty minutes and loosing several more. Tim changed too and proceded to land a couple of fish. I saw several other trollers catching fish too but none seemed to be any Kokes and we did not land any either. We all ended up with our limits by 2pm and headed out. I don't know how many time I have given my sarcastic, negitive advice to one of my buddies and end up either skunked or on the short end of the stick. It almost always ends up with me having to listen to a lecture on the correct way to fish all the way home. I got to learn to keep my mouth shut and just keep fishn!

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