Dodging The Skunk At Eagle Lake    By: Cal Kellogg November 20, 2006 More Articles by Cal

As I rigged the Shimano trolling outfits, I really didn’t expect to catch anything. My wife Gena and I had been fishing for a day and a half without a strike and from the dismal reports we had been getting from other anglers over the VHF radio I didn’t think our luck was likely to change. Yet with four hours of fishing time left in the trip I wasn’t about to give up. After all I hadn’t been skunked at Eagle in over 5 years.

On the first rod I tied on an orange and brass Cripplure and on the other I put on a watermelon colored Sep’s grub. After applying trophy trout scent Pro Cure Super Gel to both lures, I attached them to the downriggers and sent them down. The Cripplure was dropped to 16 feet, while the grub was set at 18 feet. After making a pass south of Pelican Point in 20 feet of water without results I swung the Jetcraft 1825 around and headed back to the north toward the Youth Camp over slightly deeper water.

We’d covered about a third of the distance to the Youth Camp shoreline when the Cripplure adorned rod on the portside popped off the downrigger and bent deeply as the line streamed from the reel. The rod wasn’t pulsating and for a second I thought the lure was hung on the bottom, but owing to the fact that the water was 27 feet deep I dismissed that thought.

Snatching the rod from the holder I started working the reel and the fish grudgingly started moving my way. When the unseen rainbow was within 30 feet of the boat, it woke up and took off on a hard run toward deep water. The trout didn’t get far before the soft resilience of the Talora rod stopped it. After a couple more minutes of give and take battle, Gena gently maneuvered the net beneath the handsome rainbow and the skunk was finally at bay!

Fall is my hands down favorite time to visit Eagle Lake. The crowds of summer are largely gone and the fish tend to run large having binged on minnows in their deep water haunts all summer. During the fall the lake’s rainbows typically feed aggressively and are highly responsive to both lures and baits.

As a result of these factors I’ve consistently been able to boat 3, 4 and even 5 pound trout on my forays to the lake during October and November. Last fall for example I made two trips to Eagle. The first took place during the final weekend of October. Gena and I along with 3 other couples enjoyed superb fishing on that trip.

The first day Jim and Mary Anne English teamed up with Gena and I to boat 6 big ‘bows that had a combined weight of 17.11 pounds. The next day we landed over 20 trout in the 2 to 3.5 pound range.

On my second fall trip in ’05, Gene Rush and I headed up to the lake on November 18 and 19. The action wasn’t quite as hot as it was three weeks earlier, but we did end up with easy limits and the fish were exceptionally large. On the first morning we boated 3 trout with a combined weight of 10.5 pounds and on the final evening of the adventure we pulled a beautiful 4 pounder off a point in the north end.

With all this in mind I was very confident that Gena and I along with the four other couples in our party would experience hot fishing as we departed Auburn in the early morning hours of October 13 and headed east for a weekend of trout fishing at Eagle Lake.

When we arrived at the Spalding launch ramp at 8 o’clock in the morning, the first thing I noticed was that the air temperature was chilly, but by Eagle Lake standards it was far from cold. In addition, the weather was exceptionally calm and the lake’s surface was like glass. In general, the best fishing occurs at Eagle during frigid windy weather. The conditions we encountered were more like what would be expected in the middle of June rather than the middle of October.

Undaunted, Jim and I put our boats in the water and proceeded to run to the Eagles Nest in the southern basin. Over the years anchoring along transition zone between shallow and deep water off shore of the Eagle’s Nest and drifting worms under bobbers has become one of our favorite approaches to boating big Eagle Lake trout.

After positioning our boats about 50 yards apart Jim and I got busy rigging rods and before long we had six baits suspended at different depths. We usually can count on the breeze to push our bobbers around and in this way we cover a lot of territory while anchored. With the glassy conditions we encountered our bobbers moved very little and that was definitely a handicap.

Gena and I couldn’t buy a strike that morning, but the trout were showing some interest in Jim and Mary Anne’s baits and they eventually were able to pick up 3 quality rainbows in the 2 to 2.75 pound range.

When we met up with the rest of our group at the cabin, we learned that Olin Bycroft and his crew of Darlene, Tom and Sara had picked up 4 trout while trolling a variety of lures. The bite wasn’t good, but at least some of us were picking up fish, which was great since we planned on eating our first days catch for dinner.

The next day started out much the same way; the lake was dead calm and Jim and I spent about 3 hours fishing the tules in front of the airport and the Eagle’s Nest with worms under bobbers without drawing a single strike. When I headed back to Spalding to drop off Jim and pick up Gena at 10 o’clock, I decided our best shot to hook up was to try trolling.

About 20 minutes after we picked up the first fish on the Cripplure Gena nailed one on the grub rod right in front of the Youth Camp. When the grub hooked a second trout about 5 minutes later, which we quickly lost, I switched out the Cripplure for a second grub. Working back and forth along the Youth Camp shoreline over 30 feet of water we were able to draw several more strikes.

By 3 o’clock we’d hooked 7 trout and had brought 5 to the boat. The fishing gods must have been looking down on us that afternoon. A lot of folks were going fishless, but we were able to end the day with a double hookup and head home with two limits of husky Eagle Lake trout in the cooler!

So what’s the outlook for the rest of the fall? It’s excellent as the weather becomes colder the trout will become more and more active. Add to that the fact that Project Eagle Lake Trout will be making a substantial plant of 2 to 3 pound trout near Spalding and there should be plenty of trout to keep even the most fanatical trout enthusiasts smiling.