Scofield - Gillnetting and a survey of my own

[gofish435]

I went to Scofield today to help the DWR with their semi-annual gillnetting survey. 

It was good to see the progress that Scofield is making.  It seemed to me that there continues to be fewer chubs and more of the wipers, tiger muskie, walleye, and tiger trout showing up in the nets.  To me it seemed like there was a good increase in the number of tiger trout and wipers that showed up in the nets this time.
 
I fished from my tube from 11:00 until 1:00 after the gillnetting.  I launched from the point across from the State Park.  I used a medium sink line and a size 8 bead head (white) tan/brown soft hackle and a size 8 bead head black/orange/pearl crystal bugger.  I caught two 17” cutthroats and had a few other fish on.  The algae is real bad in the dam cove and out into the main lake in that area.  

I decided to get out and go back over to the southeast side and fish there again.  When I got over there to launch there were six vehicles lined up along the shoreline.  It looked like a block party.  I launched to the south of the group and fished to the north.  The water was much clearer with no clumps of algae in the area.

I fished from 1:00 until 4:00 using a medium sink line and a size 6 bead head plum leech, size 8 bead head tan/brown soft hackle, and a size 8 bead head tan/green/pearl soft hackle.  I picked up one 16” rainbow and the rest were cutthroats from 16” to 19” long.  It's nice to see so many fish in the slot now.


The water temperature was 58 - 60 degrees and the visibility in the water of only about 3'-4' because of algae.  The reservoir level is 17% full and still going down.

The folks on shore were catching some fish but they seemed to be on the smaller side.  There were a half dozen boats out, with most of them trolling.

It was a beautiful day with very little wind, mostly sunny and in the upper 50's.