16 March 2- 16, 2018 VOL. 37 • ISS. 06

The electric trolling motor churned silently beneath the surface, pushing me toward the dam as I rigged my rods. On the first rod I tied on a chrome and blue Cripplure, while I armed the second with a 3-inch minnow plug.

I was about midway across the dam when the rod toplining the Cripplure dipped and then popped back up. The fish had missed getting hooked, but a beat later it struck again and this time luck was on my side. The rod drew down into a satisfying arc and line started flowing off the reel before I could get the rig out of the holder. The thick-bodied rainbow put up a determined battle, but within a few minutes it was safely in the cooler. For the rest of the morning I worked back and forth along the face of the dam. By early afternoon I’ d hooked and landed more than two dozen rainbows. Most of them were quickly released, but I did keep three rainbows and a lone brown in the 2 pound class. As I eased the boat back onto it’ s trailer I looked across the lake and was surprised to see that the eagle was still sitting on it’ s perch. Between seeing the eagle and battling a bunch of hard fighting trout it had been a majestic morning at Collins Lake indeed!

Collins Lake, sits at 1,200 feet in elevations, about midway between the cities of Marysville to the north and Grass Valley to the south. When full as it usually is in the spring the lake features 1,600 surface acres of water and 12.5 miles of shoreline

Unlike a lot of the state’ s premier trout fishing destinations the Collins Lake Recreation Area offers all the amenities an angler requires and is family friendly. The recreation area’ s facilities include a boat ramp and marina, picnic grounds, camping sites, by Cal Kellogg

RV sites, rental cabins and trailers, general store, laundry equipment, hot showers, sand swimming beach and a children’ s playground. If you don’ t have your own boat don’ t despair. The marina offers outboard equipped aluminum fishing boats, patio boats and ocean kayaks.

So what makes Collins Lake such an awesome fishery? Well there are a couple of driving factors behind the lake’ s superb trout fishing. The lake’ s rich waters provide an exceptional forage base in the form of prolific numbers of threadfin shad. Yet, the most important factor is the recreation area’ s commitment to providing a top notch fishing experience. Collins boasts the most aggressive trout stocking program in the north state. Spring and fall big numbers of rainbow trout are planted.

In addition to rainbows, the lake is home to a decent population of brown trout. The browns were planted as fingerlings several years ago in hopes that they would grow to trophy proportions. The browns are now showing up in the catches. While none of them have been

the double digit monsters that anglers and the lake management hope to see some day, many of them have been quality fish in the 3 to 4 pound class.

No one is certain how many of the fingerlings survived or how big the largest of them have grown. Research at other lakes indicates that even when the total number of browns in a lake exceeds the number of rainbows, rainbows show up in the catches by a ratio of about 15 to 1 over browns. There are a lot of us that believe Collins now has a strong population of big hard to hook browns lurking among its legions of rainbows.

If you haven’ t yet sampled the exceptional trout fishing Collins Lake provides and you’ d like to learn more, visit them online at www. collinslake. com.

3706

7530 Collins Lake Road, Browns Valley, CA 95918