This week Isabella rose slightly to 12 percent capacity. The annual Isabella Lake Fishing Derby starts Tomorrow, April 9th and runs through July 4th. There will be 500 tagged trout with cash prizes ranging from $20 to $5000. They stocked thousands of trout for the event and the fishing should be excellent. Shore anglers have done well with Get Bent Baits, Powerbait, spinners and GULP! Pinched Crawlers and mice tails. At previous derby’s boat anglers have had success with leadcore followed by Flicker shad, Tasmanian Devils and Needlefish. The crappie action is improving with stringers of slabs be reported. The Crappie bite continues to improve as we are getting more and more reports of anglers scoring slabs. Most of the fish are coming in 15 to 20-feet of water near structure on live shiners and minijigs. The cooler water has been keeping the Bass bite off Boaters trolling around South Lake have been picking them up on flicker shad. The cooler water has been holding back the Bass spawning and that bite remains slow. With this warmer weather it may change things and with all the trout that got dumped for the derby. Bass have been coming on big worms, deep diving crankbaits, trout imitation swimbaits, and crawdad imitation baits. The catfish bite is steady with cutbait, shrimp, and dip baits. Offshore whiskerfish are still chasing shad schools and can be taken with Heddon Sonars.