Stocked Lake Rainbows

[duschyb]

Just looking for some quick advice on where to find these fish. The lake im targeting is 30 acres and maxes out at 70ft. Wheres a good place to look for fish in spring and summer? What depths will they be at? Thanks alot for the help.

[Knute78]

How recently were they stocked? Are you fishing from shore? If they were just recently stocked they should bite on pretty much whatever you throw at them, (JK) it sometimes seems that way with newly stocked fish.

In the summer I like to cast anything that generally immitates a minnow. This has worked for me in one of the local stocked ponds I fish. It seems the fish are very willing to come up to take a lure or bait near the surface. In the pond I fish you also see alot of fish taking bugs off the surface, i am assuming fly fishing could then be a good option.

Also in the spring and even summer, I sometimes sit on shore and cast a worm and hook under a slip bobber set anywhere from 5-10' in depth. It seems to work for me most of the time.

I don't know if this helped at all, but I hope it gave you a few ideas. Because the area you want to fish is not that big you can possibly figure out where the fish hang various times of year or if it changes at all on your own, it shouldn't take too long if you get or have a depth finder and spend some time on the water. Get to know the body of water and you will do fine. Good luck.

[Gustafson]

I spend a lot of time fishing stocked trout and the best bet for me is to find pods over the deep water somewhere with your electronics and then anchor near them and slip bobber them with corn and crawlers. A pink jighead with a piece of crawler on it is my ace in the hole as well.

[Quickstrike]

i have had success in these lakes with many different methods. when i was younger, we would always fish with a slinky rig floating a crawler off of the bottom. I have also had luck casting spinners and small cranks. However, my favorite method of catching stocked rainbows would be flyfishing with wet-flys or streamers. I just cast out about 50 ft of line and slowly twich my fly about half way in and then re-cast. it's a blast when they start feeding on the surface in the mornings or evenings. It's also a lot of fun to longline cranks behind the canoe and paddle around looking for fish, when you find them I like to jig for them with small spoons such as kastmasters, pimples, and buckshot rattle spoons. there are endless ways to catch these fish and you'll figure out that it's not too tough.

[Hondemon]

In the spring and fall I long line small floating raps. This time of year I downrig the same. Blue is best although Vampire is coming on. 80 acre lake,100 feet ... 50 to60 FOW ... about 30 feet down. See plenty of people anchor in 45 FOW and slip bobber though.