On opening day the weather cooperated and gave most of us a nice day to fish and bring in the new year. I fished with friend Tom Blotter from Minden. We were on the lake at 6 am and started fishing right at 6:16 am. We trolled with fire tiger and my new favorite pattern of Rapala, a hot steel color. Tom and I long lined #3 and #5 both jointed and floating Rapala's with good success. We also used our lead core and varied our depths between 3 to 6 colors of line. Our most successful depth of our troll was in 40 to 60 feet of water. The wind came up and down throughout the day. Which we changed our trolling speed from 2.5 to 3.5 mph. We fished until 4 pm and had a total of 19 trout ranging 13 inches up to 4 lbs. With most fish in the 1.5 to 2.5 pound class. On opening day the lake acreage feet capacity was at 27750. I check out the capacity as of January 10th, it was at 34000 acreage feet. The water has risen and turned a nice shade of chocolate milk. But there has been a few anglers fishing this week and have had good success. I would use cation if you are going to take a boat out this week. There will be debris from the run off from the Walker river. This can be dangerous and detrimental to your safety and will cause damage to your vessel. Always use cation on the waters. While we were fishing on opening day, we ran in to fellow angler that had lost motor function. Luckily he had a trolling motor to keep him from crashing onto the shore. As any fellow angler and boat operator, we gave him a safe tow back to the ramp. I always keep a safety flag on board just in case of an emergency. They can tell you if there is a person in the water close by and can also let other boaters know you are in trouble. For more information of fishing at Topaz Lake. Call the Topaz Marina at 775-266-3550.