Fishing report for April 22

Saturday was the opening day of the lowland lake trout fishing season. While many lakes are open year-round, this marked the unofficial opening day of trout season for many anglers. More than 3.8 million catchable-size trout have been stocked statewide, including more than 388,000 in Pierce and Thurston county waters. Learn more about the trout opener at thenewstribune.com/outdoors.

LAKES

American: The trout action has been better than that for kokanee. Try trolling a red wedding ring tipped with scented corn.

Bradley: The recently stocked rainbow trout have been hitting such lures as a gold Kastmaster spoon.

Harts: Dock anglers are catching some trout, the crappie action has been very good for boat anglers, and bass fishing has been slow. Night crawlers have been the preferred bait.

Lone: Fly anglers are having good success. Some are using chironomids under an indicator, while others are using a dark-colored woolly bugger or leeches on a sinking line.

Offut: A rainbow trout weighing 8 pounds was caught Thursday. People are trolling Rooster Tails and Kastmasters, or fishing with worms and PowerBait. Offut Lake Resort is holding its opening day weekend derby through Sunday.

Ohop: The trout seemed to key in on green PowerBait fished off the bottom. A number of fish were measuring 18 inches.

Potholes: The mouth of Frenchman’s Wasteway, the Crab Creek area and the large dunes on the west side of the lake are good options for walleye. During the 34th Potholes Open Bass Tournament, anglers caught a record combined weight of 2,979.25 pounds of fish. Steve Backlund and Russ Baker won the event with a catch of 12 bass weighing 45.55 pounds.

Silver: The staff at Henley’s Silver Lake Resort has released 19,000 rainbow trout for Saturday’s opening day. The fish will be bigger this year, each weighing 0.5 pounds. Typically the trout weigh 0.25 pounds when the resort releases them.

Spencer: The trout fishing has been good to very good. The newly planted fish are holding close to the surface. Anglers report slowly trolling with garlic-scented PowerBait held down with split shot. Most of the fish are about 12 inches long.

RIVERS

Cowlitz: The river is producing a mix of steelhead and spring chinook.

Yakima: Warmer than normal temperatures have started snowmelt earlier, raising river levels that have made fishing difficult in recent days. The river flow, measured at Untanum, was 6,470 cubic feet per second Thursday. That is twice as high as normal.

SALTWATER

Fly fishing: The fishing for sea-run cutthroat trout remains very good along rocky beaches in the South Sound. Try using marabou Clouser minnows in olive or brown, fished on an intermediate sink line.

South Sound: The fishing must be getting a little better because there are reports of seals taking fish being reeled in by anglers. Look for chinook from the Vashon Island ferry dock to Quartermaster Harbor and the clay banks out to the flats between the Point Defiance lighthouse and Point Dalco.

Westport: The bottom fishing remains very good to excellent. Some lingcod are weighing up to 30 pounds. Some rockfish are weighing 6 pounds.

This story was originally published April 22, 2016 at 1:47 AM with the headline "Fishing report for April 22."