After reading some previous reports, I was excited to hit Riffe Lake and try for some large trout. My sons and I arrived at 9 am and began working the southwest shoreline, trolling with downriggers and a surface line. The first 1 1/2 hours went slowly and I began to wonder about our chances, but then the sun started to break through and warm things up. It seemed to help the fishing, as we started hitting fish. The color of the day for us was silver/red SuperDupers and the depth was the top 20 feet. Our deep lure did nothing. We didn't mark many fish on our fishfinder, when we did it was just a scattered one or two. We finished fishing at 1:30 after an afternoon hailstorm that my 4 and 7 year old loved. Final tally: 3 nice 14" steelhead smolts and 2 lost fish. A note about the smolts- I asked an oldtimer at the dock what we had, because frankly although they looked like rainbows they were narrower and brighter, with just a hint of red along the lateral line. He explained that last year the next higher reservior was drained and that it included thousands of steelhead smolts that were planted there (Skanewa reservior). Anyway, the fish are now in Riffe and are getting bigger. They put up a steelhead fight and were great on our light line trout gear- tailwalking and jumping like crazy. These fish are not going anywhere- there's a dam in their way- and no regs against keeping them. Riffe Lake is a wonderful place to go and enjoy a nice spring day.

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