Met up with Karl Erbacher (Okiebug) for a trip aboard his 14 alum. jobbie "Salty Balls". We started out trolling the marina area with 4 trap rigged 3" Big Hammer's in various colors worked at different depths using leadcore, keel sinkers & some just straight tied to the 1/4 leadhead. We headed out to the left of the marina to troll the east dam. We set two lead-core at 3-4 colors with a Steve's shad and a pepper trout, 2 rigs up high, 1 with a flasher. After an hour we metered a high spot with marks and I sent out my lead-core to ten colors and it was on! Strong fish fought for 10+ minutes, no horsing it with 4lb leaders. It was a fat LMB just short of 24" that completely ate the Steve's shad:

http://www.momentoffame.com/snapshots/MomentOfFame/l65200.jpg

After that it took two hours of trolling to get the next prize a very large bluegill, also on a Steve's shad way back behind a keel sinker:

http://www.momentoffame.com/snapshots/MomentOfFame/l65201.jpg

Half the day gone and no sign of the toad trout we came for so we headed off to the area we got our trout before, after putting on a couple more 2 to 4 lb. bass of course. At our arrival we saw fish slamming bait on the surface, we also debated if it was schoolie stripers or trout? We set out the rigs first pass Karl got short bit, the next pass we got our answer a 3.8 trout on a 3" Pepper Trout Hammer fished behind a flasher. That was an awesome fight to watch, the fish went ape sh!t jumping 10 plus times:

http://www.momentoffame.com/snapshots/MomentOfFame/l65202.jpg

The weather came up real fast shortly after putting that fish on so we called it a day.

Josh
http://Team-Striper.com

Some solid fish there,even the bluegill was a toad.Great job and thanks for the report.

Wish they allowed kayaks,maybe if I put a four stroke on it ;)

Josh, Karl.
You guys are killing me . I hurted my shoulder in the last 2 weeks & can't even drived a car and you guys went out & catching toads :-( .
I hope it will get better soon so I can fish.....I'm itching...
Congratulations .
Khanh.

Nice fish and great pics :)

That bass looks like it's 8 to 10lbs and super super healthy.

Thanks for "fixing my pics" Rob, & everyone for the coments. The general concensus seems to be around 9 lbs.

One other thing worth mentioning is all the bass esp. the large one had some serious crawdad mouth with the scratched up forehead & lower jaw Rob mentioned in his 3 piece article on the front page of this site. I believe your not alowed to fish live 'dads there but it may be a good time to break out the jigs.

Sorry to hear about your shoulder Khanh! I know all to well how much it sucks being laid up. Let me know when your all healed up, we'll hook up.

Josh

The way to get the pics to show in the post is as follows

1. upload your pics on momentoffame.com like you guys usually
do

2. go to the page on momentoffame where you can view the
individual picture. 

3. right click on the picture and click on properties (this
may differ on macintosh)

In the properties window, you will see a link like:

http://www.momentoffame.com/snapshots/MomentOfFame/l65200.jpg

This is the full link to that image.  Use your mouse to
highlight the link and do 'Control -> C' on your keyboard. 
Basically hold down control then tap the 'C' key and this will
copy that link into memory

4. Go to the window where you are composing your post and do
'Control -> V' or right click and click 'paste' to paste in
your link.  By pasting the full link to the picture, it will
automatically appear in the post

5. Click on 'Preview Message' to make sure that it worked.  If
it doesn't show the picture, you can try a different link or
whatever.

Note, that in this post, I checked the box to format this
message in plain text.  I did that so that the link above
would appear as text, and not as an image.  

If more people use momentoffame.com, that's cool by me since
it saves me on server space.  Hope this helps and hit me back
with any questions. 

Niiiiiice josh! That fish definitely looks 8.5, 9 to me. Looks really fat in the pic. Wish I could get up there more often, from what I've been hearing it's picking up.
-Brian

nice fisheez! :7 The LMB looks real close to 9 lbs. I compared my pic of a 8.25 lber I actually weighed. Yours looks bigger. So, it has to be more than 8.5 for sure! Gotta go get my new year license now!

Great report. Not only does the bass look healthy but so does the trout's tail. Maybe the better the tail the better the fight. Which of the alternative trap rigging method did you use?

Bob

NICEEEEEE...........Fish..Great Job guys...Has anyone caught any stripers??in there lately??Cool Dudes..
peace

Those trout were planted as fingerlings 3-5 years ago so they've grown up in there chasing bait as a fish should. That's why the tails are full & they fight like wild trout. For the trap rigging we use a sewing needle to thread 8lb Power Pro braided line through the tail & tie it to the bend in the main hook. Use a #6 octopus style hook & tie it to the leader before threading.

Brian, we've been targeting trout since the opener but have done a little bass fishing & they still all seem to be deep, she was around 45 ft.

The only striper I've heard about from there was the 14 lb. fish posted on this board. I guess one of the guys working there spotted a school of small ones before the opener. We saw some deep marks that sure looked like stripers but it's hard to say, esp. with the way the bass behave (hanging in open water) in this lake. Karl & I did a little vertical jigging on them with no luck.

Josh

Nice bass and that trout looks like actually hasn't been swimming in circles all of its life. way to go