Trout Lake Report: The Burning Bush

Life continues to move at an unprecedented pace, but you manage to carve out an evening at the lake. You don't know whether this will be the last trip of the season.

The lake is deserted. You launch on the north lake just off the channel.

You have the peacock stimulator on, and you set up at the mouth of the channel with your back to the wind and drift and strip the fly across the riffle.

You aren't paying attention when a flash of red in the corner of your eye alerts you to a take. At this time of the season you wonder with each fish if it will be your last.

But it isn't. Another fish boils in front of you, and you lay the fly out and he comes up and takes it.

You work your way across the channel mouth. The day is October beautiful and you drink it in.

You angle over to the shoreline and go through the beloved ritual of casting and stripping and casting and stripping.

The fly has just begun to make a little wake as you strip it in when you see a bigger wake come up behind and engulf it. You're encouraged to get a take along the shoreline. But is this the last fish of the season?

You have another virgin stimulator, a big orange and black one, so you thank the peacock stimulator, clip it off, and tie on the orange and black. You get some follows, and hook up twice and lose both fish.

Then you find the Burning Bush.

There are fish here. The shoreline drops off steeply here into one of the deepest areas of the lake, and the fish have the best of both worlds: shoreline and deep water beneath them. You catch fish--and miss a few, and lose a few--from the Burning Bush on down fifty yards and back again, until it's too dark to see the fly.

Moses found the Burning Bush and got The Law. You find the Burning Bush and get a celebration of life: the cold, strong, free-swimming, beautiful life of the lake; and the deep sense of being truly alive in the moment that you have experienced there season after season.

You hope this isn't the last trip of this season, and you hope that rainbow is not the last fish. But it would be a good way to go out.

Full Moon and Fog

Another Guy Who Liked Clouds

Albert Bierstadt, who painted epic idealizations of the western American landscape.

Storm in the Mountains

Overland Trail

The Oregon Trail

Mount Whitney

Indians Hunting Buffalo

Western Landscape

Estes Park, Colorado

Clouds

Supercell at twilight, Olney, Texas

If you follow this blog you know I like clouds. These photos are by Kelly DeLay, a photographer posting a cloud photo every day. They are beautiful. Go to his website at clouds365 for more. I've also added this link to my favorite sites list in the right margin. And I've added his blog to my blog list. Enjoy.

Summer storm over Snake River, Grand Teton National Park

Speaking of clouds, I learned on newswatch.nationalgeographic that cloud watchers believe they have discovered a new cloud type which they have designated as undulatus asperatus. In fact, there's an organization called  The Cloud Appreciation Society that is actively lobbying for official recognition of the name. This photo of undulatus asperatus, taken in 2009 over Cedar Rapids, Iowa, got the movement started.

That got me thinking of some of my photos from the Henry's Fork in 2010. What do you think? I think these may be undulatus.

That was a good day for clouds. On that same day, this evening storm followed us off the river. Yeah, I really like clouds.

Trout Lake Report: What Can You Say?

What can you say? It's October, it's cold and wet...and it's all so achingly beautiful.