Trout Reservoir Opening Day

I've been looking forward to this day for a while now and with the trout reservoir opening up for pike fishing a friend of mine, Steve Bates, and I had booked a boat for the opening day. The fish in this reservoir respond well to bait so the plan was to fish with bait and throw a few lures around throughout the day.

The first look at the water revealed that there was a big blue/green algae bloom and that the water levels were down a couple of feet. Fish were rising all over though so perhaps it wasn't too bad.

We motored off to a favourite spot and dropped the anchor. We both put a couple of rods out with bait on, mine with a big sardine and a whole mackerel, and Steve's with a turbo smelt and a whole herring.

It wasn't long before my sardine float twitched and moved slowly off. A quick wind down and a small fish was hooked and brought to the boat. It was only about 4lb but it was a start. Bait back out and 15 minutes later my mackerel float went, but it was a very slow, twitchy take. I wound down and leant heavily into the fish but, although I felt the fish for a split second, I failed to hook up. The mackerel came back chewed up and sporting several big slashes. I quickly sent it back out to the same spot. About 15 minutes later the same float started twitching then stopped, it twitched again and I wound down and hit it. This time a fish was hooked but it felt small. All of a sudden the fish hit the surface with a splash over 20ft of water and after a quick fight it neared the boat. This was no pike but a 4-5lb rainbow trout with a huge head and mouth. It was in beautiful condition with full fins and I was happy to see it swim off strongly.

At this point it looked like we were in for a good day but even though we moved around fishing several different areas and methods no more fish were caught. I had a couple of trout follow lures and Steve had a jack follow his lure but that was it!

On arrival back at the jetty we were told that no-one else had had any interest at all from the pike, and some had even given up early and gone home! Not a great start to the fishing on here but with colder weather planned for the end of this week perhaps the algae will die off and bring the fish on the feed.