Trout Lake Report: A Singular June Day

I celebrated the coming of June with a few hours at the lake on Friday evening. It was a warm day of sun and rain, wind and calm. The sky never stopped changing.

No one was at the channel access except a family of geese. They kindly moved aside for me.

Where there are geese there are feathers.

Where there are feathers there is a new hat.

The south lake beckoned, but I started in the channel.

I worked the muddler along both shorelines.

Fish came to it. I hooked more than I caught, and missed more than I hooked.

I followed the western shoreline into the south lake.

More fish came to the muddler. Good fish, quick to take advantage of a big opportunity.

I reached the far south end for the first time this season. Fish were cruising in pods and--occasionally--rising in flurries.

They were rising to midges but I tied on the black and olive carpet caddis. A fish rose twice nearby, and when the fly landed in his window he took it without thinking. It was the best fish of the day.

I stalked rises as the day waned. I had no more takers on the caddis, and a couple of clear refusals.

I went to an Adams with a Z-lon tail. A pod cruised near and I laid the fly down. I watched a fish chain rising straight for the fly. Right on schedule he took it. He did not want to pose. He escaped after only one useable shot.

It was getting dark, so I started back to the channel. I trolled the bead head with an olive body and brown saddle hackle collar. So far it has not yielded a fish. It got one good pull but no hookup.

Halfway back I changed flies. After some deliberation, and thinking of you streamer aficionados, I tied on a black nosed dace that I had found in the gravel at my parking place on the north end. It may be one of my flies, though I can't remember fishing it. I don't know how long it was lying there, but it was still serviceable.

And it still works. I hooked two; one jumped off the hook, and one tried--but failed.

It was a singular ending to a singular June day.