Available Fishing Guide:
Website: Reel Time Fishing
We fished McGinnis as part of our time spent staying at Buffalo lake for the weekend. Report for Rebecca lake to follow..
McGinnis is known for holding primarily Brook trout, or so my partner, 'Motoboat' tells me. The launch is pretty decent, with turn around space, and parking, etc. We didn't fish it for more than maybe 1.5 - 2.0 hours, I think? At some point the wind became super bad, and we struggled to row back to the launch in our Prams, with Minn Kota power, and oars.
I picked up just one fish, although it was the best fish of the weekend in my opinion. This Brook trout hit a wedding ring, chartreuse blade, with a worm trailer. This fish hit hard, and immediately behaved strangely, but in a good strange way, LOL. This fish just dove deep, and refused to come to the surface or to the boat. Actually I was fishing that Wedding Ring via a 5 wt. Lamiglas fly rod. I was using a full sinking line 7 IPS. I actually spent the majority of the weekend fishing my full sinking fly line/rod with salmon plugs, or trolling gear.
Anyway, this Brook trout was like a missile in its long runs, which I had to palm the spool, and give it plenty of free spool to run. I just could not bring it up. It really felt to me like it was going to come in as a 5 lb. large rainbow, etc. Finally after some time, it shows itself in the depths. The fish comes in foul hooked, and it is hooked way down right in the bottom of the belly. Therefor I have been forcing the fish to come in sideways, and displace water, not as arrow-dynamic as a fish hooked in the mouth. With the belly showing in the depths, it looked like it was going to be huge, LOL. Finally in the boat, it was about 15-16", but a fairly stocky fish for its length. The pic doesn't really do it justice.
Fish was released, and I moved on. Had a few more hits, and a really nice time on the lake. Too bad for the wind coming up.
It was really cool to catch a Brook trout, since I have only caught the a few times as a kid, fishing alpine lakes with my dad many years ago. They were always 8-9" and very skinny.