First fish was this little guy who has run up the river and jumped over the coffer dam planning to be the second boyfriend on the other side of a hen opposite her big buck.
Third cast was this hen who took the nuke minnow. Mathematically, if I could make 200 cast today, I would hook 67 steelhead and 67 trout.
The rest of the day was slow. The Leggy Fox jig hooked 2 steelhead no trout hits, I fought the one that got off long enough to know he was a bigger fish, right now the bigger fish are running over 31inches. I Tried five other jigs that got no hits. The Nuke minnow got 4 brown trout, 3 of them a good 13 inches, one an average 10 inches. One guy who came later and kept the 2 steelhead he got using a white trout worm on a jig hook, the guy in a boat also caught and kept a steelhead.
If these trout can survive the steelhead season, then in the summer big browns here rise freely to dry flies. The Tippy Dam Tail Water is fertile fishery where the trout grow fast on insects and eggs of steelhead and salmon. By summer they would average 12 inches and 15 to 17 inch fish would be common. The catch is these trout are hammered by fishermen targeting them with bait, minnows are particularly effective. Today one kid was using minnows near the top of the pool. Later 2 other kids showed up with minnows and hauled all their gear up and down the river to try every spot within walking distance. It is a good thing for kids to catch fish but it would be nice if the grow ups would learn to use artificials and barbless hooks where appropriate.
A short shank bait hook or any well designed hook will hold fish well or better if the barb is broken off. The excellent egg hooks I use behind my beads land more fish after I break the barbs off. Long story, I wrote about how, why and when when broken barb hooks work well in my Tackle and Tips Blog.