Put & take lake produces some big fish 5/24/2023

Starman77

Starman77

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On Wednesday I only had a few hours to fish, so I went to a western WA, put & take, general regulation lake to see what I could find. I only landed 3 fish, but luckily, two were big ones.

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That fish above is a 22 incher, but very fat and weighed 6.5 pounds on my handheld scale (I weighed it 3 times, as 6.5 pounds seems very heavy for a 22 incher; there were no eggs or snails in it to weigh it down; it was just a very fat fish).

The other one was smaller at 20 inches (5.5 pounds):

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Both fish had absolutely nothing in their stomachs, but both took a BH Dark Olive Rabbit Fur Leech that I was casting and stripping. The flesh was light orange, almost like a salmon.

A friend went there on Thursday and fished the lake all day, and caught 3 of the big ones, so there are likely more in there for you to catch, although I'd expect the Memorial Day holiday crowd to impact the fish population significantly.

Rex
 
Nice work Rex!

On a side note, what kind of reel is that in the photo? It's a good looking reel.
 
Starman77 said:
Thanks! Those are older Redington Delta 5/6 reels. They've worked well for me and weren't very expensive.
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Ah thanks, I will look for those. My initial thought when I saw it was that it was reminiscent of the Redington Brakewater. Which would make sense.
 
Merle said:
Ah thanks, I will look for those. My initial thought when I saw it was that it was reminiscent of the Redington Brakewater. Which would make sense.
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Yes, a very similar looking reel. You might be able to find a used Delta reel on eBay or Craig's List. I should be a Redington rep, as the two rods in the photo are Redington rods, an older Redington Torrent 9' 5 wt (one of my all-time favorite rods), and a newer Redington Crux 9' 6 wt (decent rod, but not as smooth or as powerful as the Torrent).
 
Well, I went back to this put & take lake to give it another try yesterday, although I was concerned that the holiday weekend crowd might have harvested most of the fish in the lake. I think that proved to be the case, as fishing was a lot tougher than last week, even for the smaller fish. Luckily, I did land a 20 incher, and avoided getting skunked, but it was not nearly as husky as the 20 incher I showed in the second photo above, probably only around 4 pounds instead of 5.5 pounds, and it didn't look as nice, so I let it go, mistakenly thinking that I would surely catch a bigger one (we fisherman are optimists, aren't we?). One of the shore anglers landed a 5.5 pound fish, so there must be a few big ones still in there, but they are scarce and hard to find. I only spotted one big fish on my fish finder during five hours of fishing, but was unable to get it to bite.
 
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