Grand Lake - With the latest warming trend and the snowpack starting to recede, the inflow to the lake has come down quite a bit but the fishing remains very good. Traffic on the lake continues to be very high so please use extreme caution when navigating across the water. There are a lot of paddle boarders, kayaks, sail boats and other small vessel recreationalists out there. The rainbow and brown trout fishing continues to be stellar in the early morning hours. For best results, get on the water as early as possible and try to fish as close to moving water as possible. My favorite morning bite is with a small Jerkbait along the shores. Dynamic HD trout are almost unstoppable but Tasmanian devils are a close second. Cast into shallow water and work the bait back into the depths for best success. If there is a morning rain storm, watch for surface action and look for the “slurpers”. This bite can also be a great time of you are limited to a fly rod. The lake trout have really started to chomp pretty well as of late with the water temps up into the 60’s. Small, natural colored jigs tipped with a very small piece of sucker meat has been getting most of our strikes lately. We are focusing on structure that is around 50-60 feet right now. One thing to consider is to not spend too much time on a single spot. If you are marking fish but can’t get them to fire, move on and find the active pods. This will really help you maximize how many fish you land in a day. Fishing with Bernie Guide, Jake Foos
Williams Fork - The east boat ramp hours are 6AM to 8PM daily. Last week the lake went down a bit but is holding steady at 99.5% capacity. Inlow is 133cfs, outflow is 92cfs. Surface temp has jumped to 66 early am warming to 71 mid-day. Visibility is excellent, I lose sight of jigs at about 12 feet. Jigging for Lake Trout has been good for the first few hours early AM, but once the fish have fed up on crawdads the bites gets slow until late afternoon. Small tubes or grubs tipped with sucker meat jigged gently on the bottom should produce limits of keeper size fish. When the bite slows start adding your favorite scent. Temperature tolerant juvenile fish can still be found as shallow as 20/30 feet, but the bigger fish have moved to deeper water. Look for mixed ages groups in 60 to 90 feet. There's a good chance fish suspended in the water column will bite. I'm finding Northern Pike fishing to be slow due to reduced population. Best chances on Northern's is early AM before the sun comes up, late PM as the sun is setting or windy/stormy conditions with overcast skies. Please practice catch and release on all Northern's caught. Williams Fork hasn't been stocked with Rainbow or Kokanee Salmon since 2020, fishing for both species is very slow. Brown Trout are active in the inlet area and along the rocks of the east shore line early AM. Mepp's, Vibrax and Rooster tail type spinners are getting bit. Randy H - Guide Fishing with Bernie
Lake Granby - Wate level is 99%. Water temp is 64 in the mornings warming to 68 by end of day. Boat ramp hours are 6am to 8pm with Sunset ramp being open 7 days a week and Stillwater open Friday-Sunday. Rainbow and brown trout action is fair. Best success is trolling shorelines in 20 ft of water or less early or late in the day with dodgers and pink/silver or chatreuse spinners tipped with a small piece of worm. Shore anglers are reporting success in the inlet areas early in the day with Tasmanian Devils or Kastmasters that will cast a long distance. Lake trout action remains good. Fish are starting to work a little deeper finding groups of fish from 40-90’. Being mobile and locating the active fish is important to success as the summer moves along. Glow grubs and small white or pink hair jigs tipped with sucker has been a great bait for those eater size fish (Under 19”). Upsizing baits and using a variety of plastics such as 4-6” tubes, grubs or flukes is producing more quality fish, but not as many bites. Fishing with Bernie Guide, Dan Shannon.
The Fishing with Bernie team has been guiding in Grand County for over 25 years. For more info please check out www.fishingwithbernie.com, www.facebook.com/FishingWithBernie/ or our Instagram pages https://www.instagram.com/fishing_with_bernie https://www.instagram.com/fishingwithaltitude
