Collins Lake is relatively small reservoir located outside of Marysville that is well-known for its heavy stocking of trout from fall to spring. The lake boasts that it was one the of most planted trout fishery in the state and their heavy stocking schedule is evident of that claim. With so many fish planted throughout the cold season I am ashamed to admit that even after a handful of visits throughout the years I have never put a single fish into the net out there. This time was going to be different though. I was determined to dial in and figure what it takes to get these fish to bite.
I am a fly fishing enthusiast at heart but every once in a while I get the itch to experiment with gear. Boat trolling in particular has been my mind as a skill I would like to master as it is without a doubt one of the most efficient ways to catch fish. Not only is trolling a great way to catch fish with minimal effort, it’s also a good way to keep the kids entertained whereas soaking bait waiting for the fish to come to you can get real boring real fast. I’ve been doing a ton of research on how to troll Collins Lake and found a lot of good information from guide Cal Kellog’s Youtube channel CatchAmerica. I’ve gone as far as to purchasing some of his baits and gear such as his trout trix worms and leadcore rod and reel outfit in efforts to close the learning gap. Now that I had all the necessary gear it was time to get on Collins Lake and catch some fish.
Collins Lake is a pay to play lake that offers year-round camping, fishing, and rentals. Stocking the lake as heavily as they do comes at a cost at $20 for a day pass and $30 with a boat on weekends therefore it’s important to be as effective on the water as you can out there. My son and I got a bit of a late start our first outing in early December and we put our Seaeagle Stealth Stalker in the water at around 11am. We started the day trolling a pink bugger type fly that I tied on an action disc at around 5ft. We covered water going up the arm of the west side and hooked our first fish about an hour in. I could tell that we had a something on the end of the line but the clip didn’t come loose making me believed we had snagged on something as we had just passed by a submerged rope. I grabbed the rod and started reeling in the line convinced that it was a snag until it started moving. When I finally got a good amount of line in and I saw that we had hooked a huge trout. Somehow the rod line got wrapped around the trolling line and I had to hand line the rest of the line in while my son tried to net it. My son was having some trouble reaching the fish and by the time I had the chance to take over the netting the fish came loose. Although we lost the fish it was an exciting start to the day; knowing that we were doing something right restored my confidence to keep going and try to hook another one.
The lake went glassy in the afternoon and we struggled to get anymore grabs. Everyone that we had passed by were also having a tough time hooking fish. I switched to a trout trix bubblegum worm about halfway through the day and at about 4pm, right when the wind started picking up, we hooked another fish. This fish was another big stockie and we cheered as soon as we got it into the net.
After a big Christmas storm the lake rose at least 20ft filling it up and really muddying up the lake. The clarity was pretty much nonexistent. In hindsight the best way to fish that day would’ve been focused on using bait but we trolled around instead. We trolled for about 3 hours and I believe we got one hit but nothing stuck. Despite the awful clarity there were plenty of fish being taken and the majority of them were from anglers throwing bait. Now that I’ve learned that Collins can get really muddy after a good storm rather than take the boat out fishing dirty water I will find something more productive to do with my time.
We fished Collins a third time at the end of January and the water was still stained with about 3ft – 5ft of visibility. The water was cold around 48-49 degrees in the main body and warmer in the low 50s in the shallower coves. Fishing continued to be tough with no method working. We threw the kitchen sink at them: powerbait, worms, plastics, spoons, and flies with no success. Later in the day we did manage to hook and land a huge +7 pound trout on an olive bugger trolled on a type 3 sinking line on the west side of the lake but that was our one and done.
I spoke to other anglers out there both fishing from the bank and on boats and all of them reported only a fish here and there making me suspicious of the “reports” we get on Collins Lake. Most outlets that produce fishing reports have nothing to gain or lose when giving good or bad reports but Collins Lake and its associates lose revenue if word is out that the fishing isn’t good. In my heart I’ve always felt that Collins Lake has been an experience of embellished fishing reports but lacking in person. I hope that my suspicion is wrong and that it’s just my lack of experience trolling on a boat and not having figured out how to effectively fish the lake. There are a lot of factors that can affect how the lake fishes: perhaps the fishing pressure on weekends put the fish down, maybe the lake fishes better closer to the stocking date, maybe these fish are just not as active during the winter, etc, etc. I will continue to fish Collins Lake throughout this year to try and figure it out. There is a decent stocking of both private and DFW trout scheduled for February so we’ll see if that makes any difference in the catch rate. The water temperature should be perfect along with better water clarity so fingers crossed.
