Montana Fish Report

With the surface temperature cooling down, most of the trout are moving into shallow water. There is still an abundance of shad for the fish to feed on. Bank anglers have been using Power Bait, and night crawlers to catch their limits. Try using multi-colored Power Bait. Such as, rainbow, Captain America, and sherbet. Also you can create your own colors by taking 2 or 3 different colors and mixing them. Sometimes a certain color will trigger the fish into biting. Trolling anglers have been having luck top lining and using side planners. A single night crawler threaded onto the hook is hard to beat. Needlefish and Vance spoon are also catching a lot of fish. Shad patterns such as, natural shad, chrome, and cop car will resemble what fish are feeding on. But sometimes bright colors such as chartreuse, flame orange, copper, and gold will catch their attention better than natural colors. This time of year is when we start seeing some large brown trout being caught. Try using a Rapala J9, Sebile magic swimmer, or an S-waver to coax these large aggressive fish. On Saturday December 17th W.O.N. Bass held a team tournament on the lake. Most of the teams caught some pretty nice limits. The winners were Alex Niapas and Garrett Anderson. They had a five fish limit that weighed 14.44 with a 4.81 largemouth for big fish of the tournament. They caught their fish on California Reservoir jigs. Other anglers reported catching fish on soft plastics. A drop shot rig fished from 25-50 feet with a 4" shad patterned worm is your best bet for catching the numbers. Target main lake points, humps, and islands. Swim baits and jigs are working too and will generally produce larger fish. Try using a 4" or 5" hula grub on a ½ oz. jig head. This will usually catch fish and is a good bait to cover water. You can fish it in deep or shallow water. It is best to use natural crawdad colors such as green pumpkin (297), cinnamon w/black (176), and watermelon w/black (194). (209) 736-4333, (209) 586-2383