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This report is for the South Shore property owned by abista on the south end of Long Lake. My friend and I made the hike to this out of the way treasure. If you look at this place on Google maps you would never imagine it being very productive. I've caught pike down here in February so we decided to hike down the sand cliff and try our luck. We threw one pull out with a herring rig while we cast spoons and spinners. We didn't get one single Pike. Today was the day for trout. The wind ticked away out of decent rate today. When this happens, the trout off and get very active. There's a little Bay in here where the trout will stock up waiting for bait fish to make their way into deeper water. It didn't matter what size spoon or spinner we threw, every couple of casts brought in a nice 18 inch trout. My friend is big on spoons so he threw everything from small to big casting spoons. I threw number four vibrax spinners and then moved up to number six. Even with the much larger lures we were still bringing in trout. I know a lot of people love catching big trout, however in Long Lake it is so common that we never really go hunting for them because there's always going to be a day like today. We call these confidence building days. When we've been out shore fishing or trolling and not doing much work to bring in the fish a day like today reminds us what it's like to catch fish angling. Anyway we both caught about 40 to 50 trout releasing everything that looked healthy in keeping only the ones we couldn't release. I am a big fan of vibrax spinners. These noisy spinners often times bring a fish on the first cast. Even on days when the fish don't want to bite they will bite this as it is pretty annoying to them. I catch everything on these things from walleye and Pike to trout and salmon. Having a tackle box stuffed full of number four should be a baseline for any shoreline fisherman.

Only other highlight of the day is one of the trout we caught had a massive slash mark in its tail. We hope that means that there were in fact Pike hanging around and we just didn't get one. One other weird tidbits is we caught a 14-in trout on the 4-in Herring rig. East trout have no fear and oftentimes punch way above their weight limit.

What worked:
Any size spoon
#4 through #6 vibrax spinners

What didn't work:
Targeting pike

ruthven78

7/14/2025 1:20:36 AM

which area of long lake? Avista owns quite a few different places long the south bank

ruthven78

7/14/2025 1:32:23 AM

Based on the picture looks like the the South Shore Day Use Area. The bald spot in the distance in your pic of the river looks like where the docks are (at least google maps aerial pictures show 3 docks). Those are state owned as well but you have to hike into them from the Mule Canyon gate. I might have to go pick up some vibrax lures and try it out. Any particular patterns/colors? I wonder how well fishing it will be with it being this hot out (currently in the 90's during the day)

ruthven78

7/14/2025 1:36:43 AM

doh, right in the beginning of the report you say its for South Shore and I was thinking you were talking the south shore in general , not the day use area lol

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