Collins Lake

Collins Lake is well into Fall and as beautiful as ever. Weekdays are quiet and the lake has been glassy just about every morning. It has been warmer than typical for this time of year and surface temperatures are still above 72°F. Usually we see a that number drop pretty quickly as daylight hours get shorter, and indeed by Saturday, the forecast has highs twenty degrees below what we’ve had this week, down around 75°F that should cool the surface pretty quickly.

All of this is to say that we’re almost where we need to be to start our 2024-2025 Trout Planting season. If conditions allow, we hope to get our first fall 2024 trout plant in before the weekend of October 19th.

We are hoping to include several hundred pounds of “Lightning Trout” golden rainbows in this first two-thousand pound plant.

After that we have scheduled weekly plants through Thanksgiving, a slower but steady cadence over winter and returning to weekly plants as spring fishing picks up. While we don’t announce or advertise plant days, we try to keep the pace high enough that there are plenty of trout for the folks who want to Get Out and Fish, from week one right through winter and on all the way until the surface temperature is too warm (usually about the first week of May)

Here’s a limit from the end of August, Mike Chyzy caugth these five rainbow trout using a red & gold Spinner near the dam – It will be good to start seeing some more trout. There have been some good warm water species catches as well:

These four feisty Redear were caught on mealworms by the dam by Drew and Tyler. There has been steady bass activity although very few boats on the lake lately.

Daniel and Angelo caught this camo-patterened bass from a boat using a classic Krankbait.

Finally, James & Matt Hyman show off this huge Crappie they caught using minnows in Elmer’s Cove.

As fall fishing picks up send your pictures and stories to us: fishing@collinslake.com so we can share them with the community. Don’t forget to get outside and enjoy these perfect days!