Shifty and I fished Rockport Thursday and had a blast. We arrived at Rockport Reservoir at sunrise and got to fishing quickly, running the lane just outside the buoys. We used hard baits and light line for the troll. We covered the column from 6 feet to 20 feet and trolled the lane a couple of times changing lures quickly looking for the bite. We trolled the lane twice and got nothing so we moved onto the dam and trolled it a couple times and still nothing. Turned up roadside and I put on a lure that did well for me a couple years ago with "Fish Elevated" with Capt. Delana and sure enough about 30 seconds after getting set I had the first fish online.
Using the shallow diving jerkbait with a rooster tail was the ticket. A nice plump rainbow trout for the live well. I cast and got the line set and hooked up another nice fat rainbow trout and put it in the live well. Shifty followed suit putting on one my favorite jerk baits the Purple Sunfire and sure enough, he hooked up quickly. Another big rainbow trout. By the end of the first pass along the road, we had four rainbow trout in the live well. I turned the Fish Steeler around to get back in our lane only to find 3 boats had moved in. I wasn't pleasant and went right at them, they gave way and we caught fish as we passed by them.
Shifty and I ended the morning troll with 8 rainbows in the live well. Once we figured them out it literally took us an hour to fill our limit. It turned out to be a great troll.
After we limited we turned our focus to the smallmouth bass in the reservoir. I have fished Rockport steadily since 1984 and had never targeted smallmouth. My father-in-law was a trout catching machine and he taught me so much about how to catch them and I try to remember all those lessons when I go out, but the late morning was given to smallmouth bass. I had been watching Joe Randall on "Shoot Fish Life" target the smallies in Rockport and decided since this was Shifty's first experience of fishing the lake it was time to try out what I picked up from Shoot Fish Life. Shifty being a bass fisher didn't take long to hook up the first of many. He put on his favorite crankbait, a Berkley Gilly pattern. That thing was on fire! He landed the most fish on the day for sure. We found what we figured was a nursery for the smallmouth bass because all Shifty was landing 6-8 inch smallies, but he landed 20+ in that little stretch.
We kept moving around the rocky shorelines and I finally got into a few of them. I landed a couple decent sized on a lipless firetiger and they were fun to fight on the light gear I was using. Shifty did the same and got a couple nice sized ones to the boat.
We fished into the early afternoon until the wind got so bad we called it a day. We boated well over 35 smallmouth bass and LDR'd a few more. We stopped on the way home in Kamas at the Hi Mtn Drug Store for a killer burger another first for Shifty. I think he will return with me.
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