Took two of my niece’s boys fishing at the Athens TPWD Freshwater Fisheries Center today, where they stock the trout every winter.. great time as we limited out 5 per person in less than two hours.. First half hour was spent finding out how to catch them as it wasn’t easy fishing the normal ways… No one was catching… tried gulp fake worms, crappie bites in two different colors and corn.. you could see the trout come up and look but wouldn’t take the bait.. used smallest jig head with bait under cork..

Finally took corks off and used hooks the fishery provides, tiny barbless long shanked j hook and stared chumming to get fish in a feeding frenzy and got bit nearly every cast. After a while they would quit responding to one bait and would start chumming with a different bait. Kept rotating until we had 15.. It was fun and there were some serious sized brood trout in the water as well. We didn’t catch any of the bigger ones but it was exciting seeing they were there.

You have to use barbless hooks or have them mashed down, can’t use any three pronged hooks on plugs or mepps spinner baits with three pronged hooks either.. only single hooks and barbless.

Fish would rarely hit once your bait hit bottom so weightless is way to go. These are farmed raised fish and they are used to being fed pellets so you need to make it rain with chum and it will be a sure thing.

Nice, detailed report. Congrats to the young man on a nice trout.

fun

His dad went skiing in Colorado earlier this year and then hired a guide to take him trout fishing... he only caught one. I sure enjoyed rubbing it in!

Awesome Post! Life is Good!

Moved from Texas to Missouri last year. We have some awesome Rainbow trout fishing up here. Never saw clear water like this anywhere near Houston!

Nice fish.

It's always good to see kids enjoying the outdoors.

beautiful