03-23-2015, 11:06 PM
[#0000FF]I wish I could offer more help on Deer Creek. I hesitate, not from lack of experience on the water but from the current state of things.
I first fished good old DC in the early 1960s...when there were fishing seasons, high trout limits, lots of big browns, lots of perch, lots of crawdads...and no smallmouths, walleyes, white bass, bullheads or crappies. The rainbows were plentiful but then as now the average was mid teen-inchers. But there were a lot more beefy browns.
Since the introduction of the smallmouths the lake has changed...and not for the better. Oh, it was good for an exploding smallie population until they cleaned up the crawdads and started on the perch. Once the food locker was depleted they stunted and the once-abundant perch fishery pretty much crashed. And since the big browns relied heavily on young perch for much of their growth food the decline in perch saw a reduction in both size and numbers for the browns.
Still some dandy browns in the lake. And learning where they hang out at different times of the year...and what to offer them...can be rewarding. But since the most successful usually get their fish by trolling...with downriggers...I don't chase them much in my tube.
Now that the nasty scourge (quagga mussels) are a fact of life on DC I am even less likely to launch there...until it is given a clean bill of health and/or the monitoring and decontamination processes are improved.
In short, I think you have a better shot at a 10# brown from Jordanelle than from DC. Think late fall and ice out...fishing both the shorelines and mid lake (deep) with big trout-imitating hardbaits...and big plastic swimbaits in trout colors. The bigger the browns the more they enjoy planter rainbows.
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[signature]
I first fished good old DC in the early 1960s...when there were fishing seasons, high trout limits, lots of big browns, lots of perch, lots of crawdads...and no smallmouths, walleyes, white bass, bullheads or crappies. The rainbows were plentiful but then as now the average was mid teen-inchers. But there were a lot more beefy browns.
Since the introduction of the smallmouths the lake has changed...and not for the better. Oh, it was good for an exploding smallie population until they cleaned up the crawdads and started on the perch. Once the food locker was depleted they stunted and the once-abundant perch fishery pretty much crashed. And since the big browns relied heavily on young perch for much of their growth food the decline in perch saw a reduction in both size and numbers for the browns.
Still some dandy browns in the lake. And learning where they hang out at different times of the year...and what to offer them...can be rewarding. But since the most successful usually get their fish by trolling...with downriggers...I don't chase them much in my tube.
Now that the nasty scourge (quagga mussels) are a fact of life on DC I am even less likely to launch there...until it is given a clean bill of health and/or the monitoring and decontamination processes are improved.
In short, I think you have a better shot at a 10# brown from Jordanelle than from DC. Think late fall and ice out...fishing both the shorelines and mid lake (deep) with big trout-imitating hardbaits...and big plastic swimbaits in trout colors. The bigger the browns the more they enjoy planter rainbows.
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[signature]