Productive afternoon at Lake Nahwatzel

Made it out to Lake Nahwatzel yesterday afternoon for an hour or two before the sun went down for some trout. There was light rain and little in the way of wind, about as good as you can hope for this time of year.

At first I wasn't getting any bites but I kept trolling the margin of the lake until I got hits. I've had good success trolling with a flat lined rapala f5 floating minnow, rainbow trout, tipped with a gulp maggot and a flat lined 1/16 - 1/8 rooster tail white or black. You don't need to get deep as the lake is only around 20 feet deep at its deepest. I think I was going too fast at first and got most of the fish at ~1.5mph troll.

Most of the fish bit the rapala minnow, although on previous trips, roostertails were inhaled and rapala minnows completely ignored! Hence trolling with two rods/lures.

There are a lot of trout in Lake Nahwatzel and you can catch them during the winter with the lake to yourself. The larger rainbows had really nice reddish meat too.

Thanks for the report! I'm going to have to start a list of all of these great places everyone fishes for when I have time to travel a bit further from home. Every year older the kids get the options improve.

Thank you for detailing what and how you were using and the features of the lake - very helpful!

Went out to Lake Nahwatzel for a couple hours for trout. The conditions were really nice, at least 50 degrees air temp, sunny and glassy water. However, the fishing was very slow. I went through my tackle box trying different lures and finally caught a half decent 16" rainbow on a flatlined 1/16 oz white roostertail going about 1.5mph.

Nice fish Micah.  Have you tried flatlining #3 krocodile spoons in nickel finish? or small shallow diving rapalla type lures in the same?  thats been working fairly well on American lake, been catching decent numbers of fish in the same size range.  Winter fishing is always hit and miss.

Nice fish Micah.  Have you tried flatlining #3 krocodile spoons in nickel finish? or small shallow diving rapalla type lures in the same?  thats been working fairly well on American lake, been catching decent numbers of fish in the same size range.  Winter fishing is always hit and miss.

Thanks. No, I dont have any I'll give them a try. I was using a small rapala minnow on one rod and a 1/16oz rooster tail in various colors on the other.

Thanks for the report, nice fish!  I really like that lake but don't get over on that side of the sound enough. Both times I've been there I've caught nice fish. Small dick nite spoons work well there to as does a green or black wolly bugger flat lined behind a 1/2 ounce sliding egg weight.