Trout Lake Report: The Fisherman's Economy

May is getting away from you, so you make an effort to get out again. It's still cool, windy, and showery. But the sky puts on a spectacular show that easily tops anything IMAX 3D can do.

You launch at the channel again but head into the north lake and drift with the wind due west down the long shoreline that takes you away from the road and the campground and right to the wildest part of the lake at the base of the mountain.

There are known fish hot spots along here, but with the high water they haven't come into their own yet. But you get enough follows and hits to keep you on your toes.

Down at the farthest distance from the road, in the bay where the shoreline turns north, a stretch that will be alive with Brown Drakes in just a few weeks, you drop the muddler off a log and get the attention of this beautiful fish. Beautiful, and strong. This fish gives the hardest fight of any you've caught this spring.

You do something you hardly ever do on the lake--you check the time. Jeremiah has a baseball game that you want to get to. So you turn and head back the way you came. This time you're kicking against the wind, but you have a right hand cast to the shoreline. Perfect conditions.

More swirls, hits and misses. At one familiar spot where you've caught good Browns before you find a few little fish willing to play. You manage to hook two of them.

By the time you near the take out a new band of clouds is rolling in.

And another waterfall of rain drifts toward the lake.

You pack up in record time and drive through the rain before it gets to the lake. You stop at the house to wash up for the game and find your wife there. You expected her to be at the game already.

"Oh, they changed it to Thursday night," she says in answer to your question. "Didn't anyone tell you?"

Nope.

But that's OK. In the fisherman's economy that just means you've come out ahead: the universe now owes you a full evening of fishing.