Trout Lake Report: Decidedly Octoberish

Just a few more real time adventures at the lake. Today was beautiful but chilly, especially, as is always the way, after the sun dipped behind the mountain. It was along this stretch just after I launched that I saw something I haven't seen since my first trip to this lake oh so many years ago.

There were a few fish tailing, working the weed beds, out and back, heads down and tails waggling in the sunlight. One of those tails was big, too. I had tied a Muddler on, expecting business as usual, and dropped it on their heads and stripped it over them several times, but I don't think they even noticed it. By the time I had tied a nymph on they were gone.

So I went back to a Muddler and worked my way leisurely along the weed beds picking up a fish or two here and there. The ones that were looking up.

Then the smoke began. Something bigger than a campfire was burning near the north end of the lake, and the northerly breeze was drifting the smoke over the south end. I wondered about my truck, and had a flash of me having to spend a frigid night in the lake in the float tube while a forest fire raged down the valley. But it wasn't too long before the smoke subsided.

It gave things a decidedly Octoberish look while it lasted. Reminded me of leaf burning when I was a kid.

The breeze drifted away with the smoke and a few fish began rising lazily to midges and the odd little Caddis fly.

I tied on an emerger and paddled around and caught a couple more fish. The water is definitely colder, and there is nothing sluggish about these fish now, even the little ones. They fight hard and never quit fighting, and they're out of my hand with a splash as soon as I get them back in the water.

As the shadows climbed the ridge the rises became fewer and farther between, so I tied on a Stimulator and drifted it behind me.

Nothing doing there, so I tried it with a black Muddler. Still nothing doing. By then my feet were about the same temperature as the trout, and I was losing the feeling in my thumbs. So I paddled in.

Later, when I took the tube out of the truck to put it in the shed, it wasn't wet, as it usually is; it was covered with a thin layer of ice, and the net was frozen to the seat.

Decidedly Octoberish.