WCL Tiger Trout

[PRDATR]

Some of you know I just love to Fish Woods Canyon Lake so with some personal stormy weather under the bow last night I re-spooled my ultralights. Something I was scheduled to do last month before life got in the way.

I woke up a 2:30 this morning and jumped in the shower then loaded my stuff in the truck and was down the road to QT for coffee by 2:42.

I got to the lake at about 4:35. I fished by the spillway, the spillway, sun came up and some people came by and pushed out a few cow elk. The lake was like glass and the air temps were in the high 40's. I threw some rooster tails, mepps and a couple of castmasters but to no avail and fish were active.

I moved closer to the boatramp to a place where I usually do really well but nothing and moved after a few hours. There were very few shore fisherman, almost nill and even fewer boats until after 9am.

I moved back about halfway back up to the spillway at 9:30 and continued to throw everything in my tackle box at them. I finally had a couple of fish follow a mini-crawdad lure and was bumped but missed the hookset.

Plenty of Bald Eagles and Ospreys around to pass the time. I decided to put some power eggs on on of the poles and put that out too while I fished lures from the bank. I was using crank baits too, some micros and some minnow lures too but nothing really until I tied on a trout colored castmaster. I missed the first bite but had a solid hookup a few casts later and managed to land it. After a picture it went into the fish basket a no sooner made another cast and hooked up again. While I was reeling it in the pole with the power eggs started dancing and I managed to irk out another fish, a rainbow. So happy to not get get skunked. I cleaned them and headed back at 1PM. A mile or so before Preachers Canyon traffic came to a standstill and it took 1 1/2 hours to get to Payson. No biggie but I didn't expect that. Once home I cleaned them the rest of the way after gutting them at the lake and cut off the fins, heads and scaled them.

Now here is the unexpected part. The Tigers don't really have any scales and are as slimy as an eel. I have some Javi in the crok pot since yesterday so the trout went into the freezer for tomorrow. Both of the TT inhaled the treble hook.

[WallHanger]

Being out as the sun comes up on a crisp morning is refreshing and will help any man unwind. Sounds like you spent your day right, good job staying persistent until you landed them!

[gmcbob]

Nice job! I have the exact same story for my trip up to WCL yesterday morning with the boat, except I couldn't get them to bite on anything. Congrats on the TT.

[PRDATR]

Spoke to a guy this morning in a kayak and said he was catching them on micro crankbaits. Sure do like that they don't spit the hook but they sure are slimey things.

[Guest akaspecials]

We pulled ten into my boat at WCL on Saturday in about 2 hours. No tiger trout (which we were bummed about)... Everyone was catching a surprising amount of blue gills though!

[naturebob]

Predator, Great story and good time. Enjoyed it but those are the ugliest Trout in AZ in My op.. Bring back the Brownies.............BOB!

[PRDATR]

We pulled ten into my boat at WCL on Saturday in about 2 hours. No tiger trout (which we were bummed about)... Everyone was catching a surprising amount of blue gills though!

 

I started noticing scores of 1" - 3" bluegill last year. Probably have to rotenone the lake in a few years.

[trphyhntr]

I hope they get bigger than 10", will they? Or are they like our rainbow trout here and just put and take 10" fish?

[PelaPapas]

Those tiger trout are some beautiful fish!

[PRDATR]

I think the record is about 20#. Hopefully they will eat all the bluegill in there. They are sterile and can't reproduce so from I read they are a hybrid between a Brook and Brown trout when one has 84 chromosomes and the other 80.

[ThomC]

The little bluegills are actually green sunfish and they don't get any bigger. G&F shocked the lake last year but will never get them all. If you use small worms they can be caught along with the trout. Don't throw them back, kill them. They make good bait for crawfish traps.

[PRDATR]

Thanks. There are plenty on the banks all dried up. If I was into Cichlids I would take a few home and add them to the tank but my native fishes tank has fish that are too small and would get eaten.

[SwampMafia]

I went out on Friday to willow springs. I started trolling a blue fox #2 with a mini diver out of my kayak, and after paddling about 1/4 mile, I marked a fish on my fish finder, 5 seconds later, I had a 12 inch rainbow on the line. I preceded to paddle all the way down the arm, back around the horn and down the other arm (almost 2 miles of paddling) before marking another fish. I caught that fish as well, 10 inch tiger trout. I continued trolling that shoreline until I had marked and caught my limit of fish. 2 rainbows and 4 tigers. Every fish I marked.... I caught, it was actually quite impressive, this being the first time I used my new fish finder I installed on my kayak! It was very sparse with low densities of fish, I'm assuming they were taken out of the lake pretty quickly over memorial weekend. Those tigers sure are cool though, with a heck of a lot of slime, and sharp little teeth. Got home, gutted them, vacuum sealed, and will cook em up next week!

[SwampMafia]

[tjhunt2]

Can't wait to catch some of these tiger trout. Thanks for sharing everyone.

 

TJ