Collins Lake continues to produce excellent trout action, with rainbows and lightning trout spread throughout the water column and active from the surface down to 30-35 feet. While the final stocking of the season wrapped up in early May, a strong series of fall and spring plants has left the lake well-loaded. Trollers are running spoons, Rapalas, and trolling flies with success... particularly in pink or natural tones. Faster trolls are starting to pull in more fish.

Shore casters are soaking nightcrawlers and PowerBait, landing fish near the campsite. Bass are sliding into post-spawn patterns and pulling back from the banks. Finessse soft plastics are your best bet, and just like for trout, the color pink has been working well. Water clarity is good, and the fishing pressure has backed off a bit since the early spring rush.

I fished the NTAC Tournament on Saturday, 4/26/2025. It pretty much rained/sprinkled all day from Sun Up to around 4pm. Fishing was GREAT! I caught tons of fish, especially trout, with a few spotted bass and crappie mixed in, which were released. The fish were in the top 20' of water, no matter what the depth was. Pink seemed to be the color of choice.
I even caught myself, which was a biotch! LOL! It happened early in the morning, but I just cut the curve of the hook, leaving the barb in my thumb and continued to fish the tournament, looking for that BIG trout :-)
There were a lot of trout caught, with the winning weight going over 9lbs. There were a few 7lbers as well, with lots of 3 and 2 lbers being caught. I caught a lot of trout but nothing going over 3lbs. I got the hook removed when I got home :-)