Fished West Hill Pond today and had the best opening day yet. I started off caughting the first 3 trout in the morning, while my fishing partner good a little jealous. 2 of the 3 fish were a decent size. After a little while the tides would change. Bernie's luck started to change, he nailed 2 browns that I would guess to be around 20-24 inch 4 to 5 #s each. Both fish looked nearly identical, if we didn't move to a different cove between caughting the fish I would have said they were the same fish. The bait of the day was a gold spoon called a ROUGH RIDE, 5 of the 6 trout caught were on this lure. ( its a good thing a had a few extras seeing Bernie would have been S.O.L without it )I will attach a photo when I figure out how!!! FISH ON!!

We got skunked at West Hill Saturday. I went with my 9 year old daughter and 13-year-old son. We arrived at 4:15 and were in the water at about 4:45. This is the first time we haven’t gotten fish on opening day in 20 years. Tough to make a sell on fishing to the kids like that. Usually it’s one after another. We saw three fish caught. One guy had about a 9” trout on a stringer still fishing, we saw two similar small fish caught trolling.

We used spinners first – had two strikes on an orange one – no hook ups. We tried Pins minnows on the surface too. Tried the downriggers with small spoons at 10-16’ – nothing. We saw a fair number of marks at this these depths. Huge hatch of olive and black nats. Lots of boats on the water.

Water temperature was 41.7F at the north end, 43.1F at the south end on the surface.

We quit around 9:30 – had a great breakfast at the Log House.

I may go out Thursday with the kids – they have off. Try West Hill again? Maybe the Compensating if they are open. Launch doesn’t open until 10 on weekdays – the kids like that – and if they are happy, I’m happy. I’m not sure about the fishing though at that hour.