Ice Out Kayak Fishing for Lake Trout

Ice-out on Round Valley Reservoir occurred last weekend. With cloud cover, a high pressure system, and light winds, it looked like a good day to target some early season lakers.

Targeting early season lake trout can be challenging. Unlike other times of season, most of the lake is the same temperature and the lakers are spread out over greater distances. As a result, an angler is as likely to find them in 10' as 100'. It is easier to target the lakers in the warmer months after lakes stratafy and produce a thermocline of cooler water preferable to lakers. This effectively shrinks the size of the lake and narrows the areas to look.

In the early spring, a brief, but frantic feeding period often occurs slightly after ice out. The melting ice makes the water super oxygenated and lake trout and salmon often go on a feeding binge. This can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Unfortunately, it looked like the ice out period had passed since it occurred approximately a week ago.

After the ice-out period, the cold water makes the lakers lethargic. So, the combination of lake trout being vastly spread out coupled with the lethargy caused by the cold water often makes for difficult fishing. Well, the water temperature was 34.5 degrees today and the bite was tough.

I launched at dawn and fished until noon and caught two lake trout and a holdover rainbow trout.

I found the trout in deep open water. The first laker hit in 65' and the last two fish hit in 75'. All trout were caught trolling Suttons on leadcore at a pace of approximately 1.4 mph. These fish were very deep, and the clicker on my leadcore read 250. I was surprised to find the rainbow so deep, but I've found brown trout swimming with the lakers in the past at Round Valley. Trout definitely associate more with the bottom at RV than other areas. The rainbow was bright silver like a salmon and definitely a holdover. It measured 16". My largest laker was 22", and the smaller laker was 16" and released.

I found a nice area with a deep water hump where the depth dropped from 90' to 75', and I was getting hits right on the ledge. This hump wasn't in the contour map and I marked it for future use with my GPS. Sometimes a subtle change in contour can congregate lake trout.

I didn't mark any fish during the outing except for one isolated thick school of trout moving through the flats in 20'. The fish were gone before I could jig them.

Tough weather day out there. Late morning rain coupled with a stiff wind made for cooler conditions. I was happy with the cloud cover and light chop for the fishing.

Next week or two will be more lakers. Salmon this month too.