I went down to the dock, where I learned that the worms I had bought before hand would be of no use. Since I had been to the lake two years ago, officials had split the lake in half, and made this half lure and fly fishing only. I promptly tied on a 7-gram red and gold spoon, as this was the color recommend by the tackle store. After speaking with the gentlemen fishing off the dock with me, I found that there had been only one trout caught that day, a large rainbow of about four pounds I was told. The lucky fisherman joked about being the fishing champion of the day. Needless to say, I was envious.

In all honesty my hopes were not up very high as I cast my spoon as daylight was disappearing, until suddenly my rod tip jolted and I had a feisty trout at the end of my line. Much to my surprise, a beautiful brown trout soon came to the net. In the excitement I forgot to measure it, but made sure to release her unharmed after a couple quick pictures as she was full of eggs. She was around 14-15 inches long. Schools of rainbow trout came into view, only to ignore all of our offerings. The cold and darkness finally drove me back to my car to set up for the night.

The next morning I woke up excitedly, waiting for daylight to break so I could be the first on the water. The sun started rising about 5am, as so did I. I couldn't think of a better way to spend a Saturday as I headed down to the lake. Much to my surprise, it appeared that I was the last one to show up. The shoreline was lined with fisherman, far too many to count. I found my place on the dock and cast my spoon again. Schools of rainbow trout came into view again, ignoring my spoon. I realized that this spoon may be too large for them, and downsized to a small size 2 Blue Fox spinner. Almost immediately, a rosy-cheeked rainbow trout was jumping on the end of my line, measuring about 12 inches. I had forgotten how much fun trout fishing was. I have caught two other types of trout in Japan this year, Amago (Oncorhynchus Satsukimasu) and Yamame (Oncorhynchus Sakuramasu) which are close cousins of the rainbow. Neither get nearly as large as the rainbow, a ten-inch Yamame is considered large. These trout are found only in Japan, Korea, and Far Eastern Russia.

As the morning wore on, the trout kept biting. When they seemed to stop hitting one spinner, I would change to another color or brand and they started hitting again. Anglers next to me were using floating or suspending minnows, and catching rainbow trout also. Suddenly, one angler's rod doubled over, and everyone was yelling and laughing with excitement. He had hooked a HUGE rainbow trout! It appeared that I had the biggest net, so I offered my services, which he readily accepted. The monster rainbow slid into the net, and there was much cheering. The fish weighed seven pounds even, twenty-eight inches long, by far the largest rainbow trout that I have ever seen. The next surprise came when we discovered that the monster trout had another spoon stuck in his mouth with a broken line attached! The lure was still shiny, looking like it had just came out of the package. The very lucky angler thought about releasing the fish, but the fish was badly hooked and didn't look like it would survive, and was kept. The fish was caught on a small 1/8 ounces jigging spoon called a Trout Surger.

After catching and releasing some small trout and close to reaching my limit, I decided to give fly-fishing a try. I had brought my tiny 2wt fly rod I bought for stream fishing for Yamame and Amago trout along just for fun. I soon realized that this tiny rod wasn't meant for the large lake I was fishing, as my feeble casts landed no more than 20 or 25 feet in front of me, as a fisherman next to me more than doubled the length of my casts with his own 7wt. However, I did manage to hook a small Yamame trout on a small wooly bugger, and released it unharmed. I didn't know that Yamame had lived in this lake until then, I never before seen on there. Very similar to a rainbow trout, the Yamame lives only in Japan to my knowledge, and instead of having the magenta stripe, it has reddish-pink blotches on the side, and small round black spots, of which are larger than on the rainbow. The Amago is almost a twin of the Yamame, only having red spots. They prefer slower areas of clean cold streams, and can be caught on bait or small flies or lures.

Early afternoon found the fishing difficult, as the trout found many lures thrown their ways and seemed to become more difficult to tempt into striking. The sun pushed the trout into deeper water, and we changed to small spoons, about 3 grams, and counted down three seconds or so before starting a retrieve. Later afternoon found rain clouds moving in, and the trout started to appear again. Another angler at the end of the dock, hooked into another large trout. While not nearly as large as the large rainbow caught earlier, it was a very respectable fish, and my net was requested again. I soon netted a gorgeous 20" brown trout for the man, hooked on a vibrating bass lure, much like a Rat-L-Trap, the second trout the man had hooked that day while fishing for bass. While everyone stared at the beautiful fish, another angler was dragging a brown trout towards the shore, as it was also too large to lift out of the water with the light line. I netted that trout, another large brown trout, this one caught on a swimming minnow lure. It seemed that the brown trout loved to come out in the evening right before sunset.

I had promised a friend I'd bring home some trout for dinner, and kept my limit of 15 pan-sized trout. I was amazed at how few people kept the fish they caught. Just judging from what I saw, I would say about 75% of the trout I saw caught were released unharmed.

I fished until nearly everyone left, hoping to catch one of those lunker browns or rainbows myself, but never did hook any trophies. Numerous times we saw trout swim by the dock in the 3-4 pound range and larger, and one brown that was also about 7 pounds, but ignored our offerings in the search for something more realistic and healthier. I honestly have never seen so many large trout in my life. The hot lures were small Panther Martin and Blue Fox spinners, and tiny spoons, all in silver, gold, green, or red.