Lake Report: Lovely Evening

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It was a lovely evening. I fished the north end since I came in from the north straight from work. I had been thinking south end, but as soon as I pulled around the bend and saw the lake I knew I needed to check out that high end again.

I had the float tube. It was a good day for it, a balmy 65 degrees, but tomorrow is supposed to be ten degrees cooler. The float tube should hold up OK; it did fine this evening. Now we'll just have to see how I hold up in the cooler weather.

I started with the Bomber, poor thing. I caught this little fish on it and noticed that the tinsel has come loose now. I'm not going to retire it quite yet, not while it's still bringing in the fish.

I did give it a rest, though. The wind had been blowing when I arrived, but it quit and many fish started to rise out in open water. So I paddled out and got ready. I had been thinking about tactics and had decided to go with a Stimulator on point with an emerger on a dropper. (In my terminology, the point fly is the one at the end of the leader from which you tie the dropper fly. Makes sense to me.) I tied the Stimulator on 4X and the emerger on 6X.

That was fun fishing. I got hits on the emerger and on the Stimulator. Missed a few messing with the camera and generally not paying close enough attention.

There were big fish up again, but their presence was fleeting, and I couldn't get my rig in front of them before they dematerialized in that way they have. This nice middle-sized fish, though, whacked the Stimulator.

When things slowed down I changed the emerger to a soft hackle and picked up a couple more small fish on it. They liked it moving, so I'd wait for the rises to get close, then give it a slow pull.
The light kept dropping, a little breeze came up, the Stimulator got harder and harder to see, and still I stayed out there enjoying the evening--and ready if, by some chance, a big night cruiser were to decide to come up and kill the Stimulator. That's a nice combination: relaxed alertness.
An owl hooted off in the trees, two herons flew over, bats flitted over the riffles, whiffs of woodsmoke drifted over the water from the camps of deer hunters, and a fisherman bobbed quietly in his element.

It was over all too soon. Tomorrow I need to get there earlier. Lovely evenings are nice, but I'd like to have a lovely day.