Headed back out to the Gunpowder River yesterday while it was nice and warm out. I took a good friend of mine with me for his first experience fishing for Maryland hatchery fish with Powerbait. It was a nice day, and we started getting bites almost as soon as we got lines in the water. Soon after I got a nice 12 or 13 inch rainbow trout to finally bite enough to set a hook and landed the fish.
While we were fishing this particular spot we noticed a large number of shad schooled up and swimming around in this spot. They were all probably 3 - 7 inches long and were in fact mostly just annoying. I think the large shad school was in fact spooking the trout.
After a little while longer we headed up stream to another location. First cast I was able to catch another decent rainbow trout, we stayed here for the next hour and were able to see trout swimming around and we almost were constantly getting bites, not bad for mid-day two weeks after the last opening day. I was able to land 3 more rainbow trout, 2 of which were very small and I let them go. We only fished for about 2 hours and I was able to land 5 fish and keep 3, not a bad couple hours.
With stocking continuing over the next few weeks I will likely head out a few more times before I switch to summer time fishing.
Anyone else been out trout fishing lately? How have you been doing?
