Brookie Lake Report: Hello, May

You celebrate May Day with an evening trip to Brookie Lake. It's the best time of year to be here, before the weeds take over.

A spring breeze ruffles the water. You start with a little muddler but the expected hits don't come.

You tie on a deer hair caddis and give that a try as you work down to the far shoreline.

Nothing doing with that, so you try another deer hair fly with an orange head. By now you're at that far shoreline, and you notice something.

Hundreds of little brookies are jumping out of the water on a feeding spree, presumably working on bugs the wind has pushed to this end.

You strip the deer hair fly with vigor, and some fish take it the same way. They are fresh and cold and strong and beautiful.

You think you've found the brookie mother lode, but you glance back and see that the whole lake has little brookies popping out of it.

You would think you'd be catching fish on every cast, but you aren't. You switch to the small deer hair caddis and get a fish to take it on the strip.

The wind dies down, and you can see the clouds of minute midges swirling over the water. You try some tiny little dries to see if you can get some straight dry fly takes.

By now the brookies seem to have formed distinct pods, and they appear to be more skittish without the riffles. They're hitting and running, and you can't seem to get the fly at the right place at the right time. You have to admire these shifty little fish.

You decide to head in. Now you go counter-intuitive and tie on that muddler again. The frenetic feeding activity is tapering off, but you target rises as you can as you kick back.

Halfway back to the take out you come up on a very active little pod, many of them still coming straight out of the water. You drop the muddler into the middle of it and the fish of the day hits it before you can give it a strip.

You get one more the same way, and then that's it. The lake is quiet.

Until another beautiful May day dawns.