I decided to take a friend of mine fishing for some trout on the opener. He has not caught a fish in a while, so I knew Mission Lake on the opener would be a sure thing. I started him off on a Rebel crawdad while I went with a Mustad slow death hook rigged with a Berkley Gulp 2" pinched crawler or the 3" Gulp killer crawler. Within a few minutes it was fish on for both of us. We had steady action all morning catching lots of recent stockers. I like Mission lake because of the beautiful scenery and chance to catch a nice triploid. Bryan lost a beautiful triploid mid morning. We ended up keeping our limits of badly hooked fish and released several that went undamaged. (Did not net them or touch them. Left them in the water and carefully unhooked them with the hemostats.) It was a fun day to further fine tune my slow death presentation. We used a quarter ounce to 3/8 ounce weight on the main line, a good swivel, and a six foot leader of Berkley 10lb pro grade flourocarbon tied to the hoook. Carefully thread the worm up the hook so the nose covers the eye and leave the rest to dangle. The worm has to be straight on the shank and not on the bend to get that killer spinning action. Those trout tore into the worms hitting them hard. I did not use a flasher or any pop gear to attract the fish. We get more of a fight with a small weight. We also caught a couple of fish on a #5 original floating rapapla in gold and orange. Tight lines everybody!

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