Proud Lake Trout Fishing Opener 2014

Every year on the last Saturday of April hundreds of outdoorsmen and women flock to many streams lakes and ponds to enjoy the opening day of "catch and keep" trout season.  For me this is usually my first major fishing outing of the year to fish lower Proud Lake.  In fact you've seen pictures of the results of last year's trout opener in my review of the Quantum Optix 30 spinning reel.

However for me the last two years I've been doing things a bit differently but before I tell you my change I'll tell you what the original yearly tradition was.  For a few years prior to this one my trout opener consisted of me lining up along the base of the dam with about 50 to 100 other people waiting with baited hook and rod in hand on the midnight hour to pitch my first line in the water to catch my limit in trout.  Can you say combat fishing at it's best.  I would literally stand shoulder to shoulder with people pitching as close to the dam as possible hoping to hook a trout and when I did hoping not to tangle up in someone else's line or legs to land my fish.  While it's very affective it was also very annoying so last year my fishing partner and I decided we'd no longer deal with the troutathon and float tube down the following morning.

For the most part this was probably the best idea we had for trout fishing last year.  Cause the following morning we pretty much had our choice of places to fish.  We saw very little other traffic on the river

outside of a few kayakers and waders where ever there was a place they could gain access.  However this year I think someone passed out a memo on the benefits of kayaking in because we saw at least 12 to 15 kayakers, several aluminum boats and quite a few canoes along the river fishing.  A big shock but a good shock in my opinion because I love to see other sportsmen and women taking advantage of the opportunity to fish and enjoy the outdoors.

Every year prior to this one I've always stuck to the same bait for trout and that is berkley powerbait trout bait.  Usually, because of fishing at night, the best colors for me have been the white and pink.  However this year pink drew no bites whatsoever but the yellow and white did very well.  In addition to powerbait big fish catchers this year were corn (an old standby for many fishermen), minnow baits, and white or silver inline spinners or rooster tails.  In fact the three largest trout I saw caught this year were taken on white rooster tails and a minnow bait like the original rapala floating minnow.

Overall I did pretty well this year catching my limit of trout (both browns and rainbows) on the opening day.  However unfortunately I wasn't able to get back out and catch some more that week but I plan on making a trip in the future up north to chase wild browns and rainbows when they start feeding on mice.