Fishing or shopping? I’ll take the serenity of trout fishing on Black Friday over the chaos of shopping any day.
Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife has offered a Black Friday Special in Southwest Washington in each of the past three years.
Here’s what happens: A smattering of lakes are closed to fishing on Monday through Thursday of Thanksgiving week. Each is planted with 2,000 chunky rainbow trout. Angling opens for the fish on Black Friday.
The waters stocked include Klineline Pond and Battle Ground Lake in Clark County, Kress Lake in Cowlitz County, Rowland Lake in Klickitat County plus two locales in Lewis County.
I didn’t participate in the first two Black Friday events, although the idea was intriguing.
Yeah, they are trout that were swimming in a hatchery last week. Then again, what else is there to fish for in the final week of November — long-in-the-tooth coho or winter steelhead still weeks away from really arriving.
So when Buzz Ramsey of Klickitat, also brand manager for Yakima Bait Co., called and asked if I wanted to join him on Black Friday at Rowland Lake, it was an easy answer.
Prior to the call, I seriously was thinking about pulling my own boat all the way to Rowland Lake and fish alone. I like to fish and hike in the Columbia River Gorge and it felt like time for a bit of a road trip.
Washington is trying to build interest in winter trout fishing. I wanted to see if the Black Friday fishery actually brought out many anglers.
Ramsey said to meet him at 10 a.m. He’s fished Black Friday before and said the bite didn’t seem to pick up until about mid-morning, so no need for an early start.
At 10 a.m., there were about 20 bank anglers. Five boats or rafts were on the water initially, and doubled by about noon.
The trout stocked for Black Friday draw anglers to Rowland Lake on decent-weather days through the winter — it’s not just a one-day event, Ramsey said.
“These fish will carry over until the spring opener in April,” he said.
So how did we do?
We started a bit after 10 a.m. and each had five-fish limits around 1 p.m. Ramsey is an icon in Northwest fishing circles through his work for Yakima Bait Co. and Luhr Jensen before that.
He’s written dozens of how-to-catch-fish brochures and presented hundreds of angling seminars. He’s a regular at the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen’s Show each February at the Portland Expo Center, normally presenting information on how to catch Columbia River spring chinook.
It’s not surprising Ramsey knows how to catch trout a half hour away from his home along the Klickitat River.
We tossed out 3-inch orange Berkley Trout Worms on about a 2-foot leader below a split shot and small swivel and worked the offering slowly back to the boat.
The bite was not fast, but every few minutes, one or the other would get a fish.
The final fish came when I cast out a gold Mag Lip 3.0 with a red-orange stripe on top. The 3.0 size of Mag Lip will enter the market in 2015.
Almost as if it were scripted, the new lure hooked a trout on about the third crank of the reel handle.
I measured the trout when I cleaned them at home. A couple were 14 inches. All were deep bodied.
Trout fishing on Black Friday is never going to rival spring chinook angling in April, chinook fishing at Buoy 10 in August or coho fishing the mouth of the Cowlitz in early October.
But for the final Friday in November? It was a nice way to close out the 2014 fishing year.
