Look at the big red band on this hug rainbow. Fisheries departments end up with surplus breeders and usually put these big fish in one of several lakes. Dedicated fishermen can learn to target these trophies. (Photo courtesy Don Lewis)
March 16, 2026
By Gary Lewis
“Let’s just put the trolling motor down,” I said, “and work our way over to the other bank.”
Dad grabbed a 4-weight fly rod while I put the trolling motor down and connected the forward fish finder. We turned the boat away from the ramp and shook out our lines. I was using a CJ Rufus on an intermediate line, while dad had a dark bead-head leggy nymph of some sort and a No. 14 Prince Nymph on the trailer. I know what it was because I took it out of the jaw of a 25-inch rainbow.
We were only 300 yards from the launch when dad’s rod buried.
“Get your rod in the air,” I told him. “Don’t horse it.”
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The first thing that came to the surface was a six-foot-long, beaver-chewed stick, but right behind it was the trout, and when the stick came free, the fish fought on the surface till dad was able to get its head up and skate it toward the net.
We have a favorite early-season reservoir that fishes very well February through mid-April, and after that we turn our attention to higher elevation fisheries. We try to keep our fingers on the pulses of several fisheries.
From the middle of March through the end of April, hatchery trout operations begin ramping up. Most fisheries departments post stocking schedules on their websites. Late snowstorms and multi-day deluges can change the timing of fish releases.
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SAFETY WEEK TIP
ALWAYS WEAR YOUR LIFE JACKET Get a comfortable U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket designed for use on a PWC, and make sure you wear it every time. It’s the law, even for adults.
Most lakes get the “legals,” which average about 10 inches, but a fisherman can catch bigger trout by targeting trophies. It pays to be in the know.
Here is how to comb the news releases and figure out where to fish this weekend and throughout the spring. The data is in the stocking schedules, but there is information that does not get posted. Read on and learn why some of the best fishing is not posted online, and how to avoid crowded fisheries and catch more and bigger fish.
WEB SCOUTING We will use my home state of Oregon as an example. Oregon posts their stocking schedule here . Filter the data by choosing one of six zones: Central, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest and Willamette.
ODFW breaks the stocking schedule down by water body, zone, and type of trout: Legal, Trophy, Brood, and Fingerling. This is pretty clear, but they are leaving out some important information for the trophy trout hunter. Surplus steelhead are not accounted for in this table.
Fisheries departments don’t leave this important info out on purpose. They just don’t have the bandwidth to be the source for all information.
HIDDEN GEMS In the Northwest, the Snake River serves as the boundary for Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Because the Snake is at the junction of three states, the fisheries managers tend to forget to advertise the trout fishing.
Both steelhead and trout can be caught downstream of Hells Canyon Dam. Both Oxbow and Hells Canyon reservoirs have great trout fishing, and if you look at them you will realize these are not your average hatchery trout. They are, for lack of a better term, landlocked hatchery steelhead. In addition, ODFW releases surplus steelhead in Hells Canyon. This is such an under-utilized fishery that ODFW allows anglers to kept three trout over 20 inches daily.
The surplus steelhead story is a larger conversation, but suffice to say, when there are surplus steelhead (primarily in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho), fisheries departments put them in nearby bodies of water, large and small. And a lot of times the release is not reported on a website.
Every state has its own way of accounting, but one way to find information that does not exist elsewhere is to click around on an interactive trout-stocking map showing hyperlinked locations. Or search the historical trout stocking data maintained on some state web sites.
In southern Oregon, Gary Lewis (left) and Darren Roe (right) on a family fun fishing trip. (Photo courtesy Mitch Booher) Some reservoirs and tailwater fisheries are not on a department stocking schedule because they are managed by utility companies with their own hatcheries. These can be some of the best destinations because they might not get the traffic and there could be more fish per acre than your average trout lake. Part of the negotiation between the power company and the tribe or the community that permitted the dam was to provide a fishery. Every year they are contractually obligated to populate the lake with 20,000 or 30,000 trout. They are going to plant fish in April or May, but chances are no one is taking the time to put the data on a list.
CARRYOVER TROUT March is carryover season. The best thing about fishing early is the chance to catch trout that wintered over as the water temperature cranks up their metabolisms. A hatchery holdover that made it through the winter is a hard fighter, bigger than average, and healthy to eat, with solid flesh. These fish that were stocked as 10- to 12-inchers last season will now be 15 to 18 inches long. They look good on a stringer and even better in a frying pan.
Catching carryovers means targeting fish that are not this year’s stockers. Holdovers have been eating bugs and smaller fish as they can catch them. Natural baits, flies, spinners, spoons, and small crankbaits are better big-fish bets than jar baits.
Also, if you know the stocking forecast, you can hit the water before the tanker truck and the crowds arrive, while the shallows are warming and these bigger trout are cruising transition zones like the edges of the weed beds and ledges.
FASTER LIMITS If the goal is to find fast fishing, when trout are fat and a limit of legals can be had in an hour or two, go back to the hatchery trout tables and fire up a calculator. We are looking for more stockers per acre. The results can surprise you.
When I was 11 to 14 years old, my favorite trout lake was a 50-acre flooded volcano. The water was deep and clear, and a lot of people, including me, caught their first limit of trout there. Some years, the state of Washington will put 15,000 trout in the lake in the spring for a whopping 300 fish per acre. Another lake in the same area will receive more than 100 trout per acre in the springtime. The amount of angling effort determines how many fish are planted, of course. And proximity to population centers is the deciding factor.
TROPHY TROUT Hatchery managers know we like to catch a limit of legals, but they also know we are going to get bored with them when we get good at it. That’s why they raise what anglers in Oregon are calling the “trophy.” Other agencies delineate these larger, prettier trout with a weight designation greater than 0.5 pounds each. These stretch the tape 12 to 18 inches.
A long-armed trophy trout for Don Lewis fishing a low elevation high desert reservoir. (Photo courtesy Dave Isom) The meat may be pinker or redder than normal thanks to a diet high in shrimp or krill, and the colorations can be brilliant. Trophy trout look like wild fish, are hard fighters, and are fairly easy to catch, especially in the first week or three.
BROOD STOCK BY THE NUMBERS Brood stock are the fish the hatcheries use for egg and sperm production. When paired together, the biggest females and the biggest, healthiest males are going to produce the most successful hatches and the biggest, strongest fish. As these useful fish reach the end of their productive lives, the surplus get scheduled for a ride in the truck. The lake referenced earlier is projected to get 200 brood stock in March and April. I have seen these fish go as big as 12 pounds, although they average 4 to 6 pounds. Big brood fish already know how to make a living in the wild, as they have been eating bugs their whole lives. But they have to eat a lot to survive, and your small-trout tactics are not going to intersect with the appetite of the big brood stock.
Fishing jar baits? Try to tailor the leader to big-trout specifications. Run a shorter leader when casting into slots where big trout rest close to the bottom. Alternatively, when big fish are actively feeding they can run along a ledge, holding tight to the structure. This might mean using a 6-foot leader to position the bait where they are going to see it in deep water.
One of my favorite big-trout lakes is scheduled to get 2,500 legals in the third week of March, along with 200 trophies and 50 brood stock. I’ll probably have to catch a dozen legals to get one trophy and 50 legals before I hook a brood stock. I like those numbers.
DIY JAR BAITS A step-by-step process for making your own floating baits. Floating baits are a really good choice for fresh-stocked rainbows. (Gary Lewis photo) In this example, we will try to achieve a purple coloration, using a blend of fish oil and anise scent that should trigger trout in clear water.
1. Start with a clean, empty zip-top sandwich bag and a bag of mini marshmallows. Depending on the water you plan to fish and the size of the quarry, you might want to cut some or all of the marshmallows in half.
2. Fill one third of the bag with marshmallows. Add six or seven drops of food coloring. In this case we pre-mixed blue and red for a nice purple hue. Now shake it. Add more food coloring as necessary to achieve the proper tint.
3. Next, add three squirts of fish oil (we used trout oil). Give the bag a good hard shaking until the oil has a chance to touch all the marshmallows.
4. Add two to four squirts of anise oil. Shake the bag hard.
5. Give it a sniff test and add more fish oil or anise as suits your olfactory sensibilities.
6. Empty the finished product into jars and screw the lids down tight. Put a piece of masking tape or a similar label on the lid and write down the recipe so you can replicate or improve upon it later.
TOP WESTERN HATCHERY TROUT LAKES Nine lakes around the region that get big-time trout stockings each spring. Shutterstock photo Pearrygin Lake, Washington May and June are peak months for 190-acre Pearrygin Lake in Washington’s Okanogan County. Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife stocks legal-size hatchery rainbows, and the catching can be fast with rainbows that average 10 to 13 inches. The Department also stocks triploid rainbows, which can run quite a bit bigger.
Winchester Lake, Idaho Each year, starting in the spring, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game plants legal rainbows in Winchester Lake, located 38 miles south of Lewiston. Hatchery trout are the main fishery, but the 104-acre lake is full of smallmouth bass, largemouths, crappies, bluegills, yellow perch, channel catfish, and tiger muskies.
Lake Mary Ronan, Montana Lake Mary Ronan comes into its own when the water begins to warm in the spring. This lake is 102 miles from Missoula and 38 miles from Kalispell. At 1,500 acres, Mary Ronan is home to kokanee, yellow perch, smallmouth and largemouth bass, and trout. Rainbow trout were last stocked in 1974, but enough natural production remains that anglers still catch them. The state stocks kokanee and cutthroats.
Steamboat Lake, Colorado Steamboat Lake is a 1,053-acre reservoir that offers good fishing for rainbow trout and cutthroats, as well as great camping . The lake was created when the dam was completed in the late 1960s. Rainbow Ridge and Meadow Point offer some of the best fishing from shore. For the fly-fisherman with a float tube, these are good access points as well. Most bank anglers rely on jar baits.
Woods Canyon Lake and Rim Lakes, Arizona About 30 miles east of Payson lies Woods Canyon Lake, one of a series of waters in the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest called the Rim Lakes. Woods Canyon has about 55 surface acres and an average depth of more than 20 feet. Rainbow trout are stocked May through September, and there are big brown trout too.
Strawberry Reservoir, Utah Trout grow fast in Strawberry Reservoir. The Bear Lake strain of cutthroat is the priority fish, but hatchery rainbow and kokanee are available. Located in Wasatch County, the 17,000-acre lake is 79 miles from Salt Lake City and just 60 miles out of Provo.
Timothy Lake, Oregon Timothy Lake, 80 miles east of Portland, is a 1,300-acre reservoir in eastern Clackamas County and a fantastic fishery for bank anglers and boaters. Brookies thrive on crayfish and snails. In June, the rainbow bite picks up, and it’s possible to get holdover trout that range to 18 inches.
Trinity Lake, Northern California A bit more than an hour’s drive from Redding and 20 miles from Weaverville, Trinity Lake is far enough from the freeway but close enough to towns to make it a great fit for the entire family. This is the third largest reservoir in the state, and the most popular fisheries are for smallmouth bass and rainbow trout.
Mono Lake Basin, Southern California There might not be fish in Mono Lake, but all the freshwater bodies in the basin have trout—rainbows, browns, Lahontan cutts—and there are brookies in the streams. Mono County lakes are stocked with a half million pounds of trout each year. Silver Lake, Lundy, June, Gull, Silver, and Grant are reliable fisheries for anyone in the family. Silver Lake has a resort, a café, and boat rentals.
