A buddy came over to fish the pond today, and I decided that he needed to take some RBT home. There are still around 60 RBT/Golden Morphs in the pond and if they don't make it that would be a lot of fish to just let die. So, I'll whittle down the numbers a bit. All were caught on Stubby Steves.
He took 6 RBT home, this was the largest one:
20" long, 4.25#! Someone was eating well since late October!!
I also caught another one of the pellet trained LMB on Stubby Steves. I was fishing with no float, just a #10 Owner Mosquito hook tied on 2# Maxima. The LMB was 14 3/4", 2.24#. It now proudly wears tag #004. I ran to the house to get the tagger after I caught it, and the camera. I quickly tagged it, weighed it and as it was swimming away my buddy asked "Why did you bring the camera?"
Oops. At least it came in handy for the trout.
I have had the aerator running when air temps are below 70°. The water level in the pond started dropping, so I turned on the well a couple of days ago. Yesterday I noticed quite a few of the trout hanging out in the well pump outflow. I need to get a thermometer that will take temps deeper than 8', but my suspicions are that the aeration is making the deeper water warmer. So, I'm going to suspend aeration for a few days and see if the trout still congregate around the well inflow.
