Sunday Fishing Report: Sanctuary

The weekend was good, but extremely busy and intense. Lots of family, but also lots of work. After it was all over I slipped away to the lake for an evening of rest and renewal.
I launched at the channel between the upper and lower lakes, rich waters that include John's Cove. But I angled away from John's Cove down the northern shore of the lower lake where the water was unruffled by a breeze from the north.
This is a storied stretch of shoreline; Lidia caught her 20 incher here.
On the way, trolling as I went, the healing began.

Caddis are more a factor here than in any other stretch of water that I know of. So I tied on Lidia's Caddis. Things started slow as I worked the lake edge of the shoreline weedbeds. But I was able to coax this trout to take.

I saw slashing rises beginning inside the weedbeds right at the bank. One spot looked well-patrolled by some good fish. I worked my way in and dropped my fly right into their kitchen.

Almost instantly a fish came to it. I had been expecting another slashing, splashing strike, if I got anything. But the take was understated, almost delicate. If I had looked away for a moment I might have missed it.

I tightened on a heavy fish. I couldn't back out into open water as I sometimes do, and I couldn't pause to reel in slack line, so I kept levering his head up as well as I could and stripped him in through the weeds.
He was the best Rainbow of the season so far, one of the best ever. He was two handspans from his head to the fork of his tail, so I make him at 19 inches.

I began to feel like myself again.

I dropped the fly back into the same place. Again a quick take, a weedy battle, and a beautiful fish. This take was even more delicate. I saw a single, thin ripple begin to expand and noticed that the fly was gone.

I like my work. I try to help harried souls find sanctuary.

But sometimes what gets me through is knowing right where my sanctuary is.

Thursday Fishing Report: Alone

I was alone.
The campers, there so long, were gone without a trace.
The Eagle was gone; it may have been out of sight in the deepening sky.
The Loons were gone; they may have been in open water scanning the sky.
I carried no camera; Lidia had it, framing and fixing memories of a campout with her friends.
So you weren't there either.
Just me, the living lake, a hot day burning down to twilight, trout like glowing embers in my hands, and a long, slow cooling into the summer dark.
And nothing left but the afterglow of memory.

Tuesday Fishing Report: A Leaf On A Lake

No big stories.
Just an economy of experience in which I felt like a leaf on the lake, an infinitesimal yet integral part of an incomprehensibly vast beauty.
Don't need no big stories when you got that.

Monday Fishing Report: Nice One, Eagle

The rain cooled things down wonderfully. I'm sure these cows (in a picture from Sunday) enjoyed that as much as we did.
It was still mostly overcast when I arrived at the south end of the lake today, but that soon cleared out. A breeze was blowing through the late afternoon and early evening, so I fished the sheltered spots along the banks.
I tied up a couple of hopper imitations this morning. I was going to say they're prototypes, but every fly I tie is a prototype. Let's just say I don't use recipes much anymore, employing a freestyle approach.
I designed them to imitate the little brown and gray hoppers now thick in the fields. Lidia and I drove through a blizzard of them on Sunday. If the trout are seeing any hoppers right now, it's these guys.
They can't be seeing many because the fly was getting precious few strikes, and those from little fish. But they might be seeing some because I finally did get a grab from a heavy fish.
We always think the fish we hook and lose without ever seeing are the biggest ones in the water. Then again, they could be. I base my belief that this one was a good fish on his first heavy pull. It took him deep into the weeds in spite of my efforts to hold him. I had 4X on, so I was giving it everything I had. I got him up once--holding the rod with both hands as high as I could, leaning way back in the float tube--but he went down again. When I finally worked the line back up all I had was a hook full of weeds.
Between those weeds and the torn weeds that slowly floated to the surface, the battlefield was littered with swathes of green.
This is a paradoxical business; sometimes losing a good fish is as satisfying as catching one.
I fished on down this shoreline but got no more strikes. While I was doing that an Eagle flew low over me heading down to the south end. Soon I heard a Loon begin to call (I wonder if there are two pairs of Loons; I always see them at both ends of the lake) and then I heard a kasploosh!
I looked back and the Eagle had just hit the water right by the shore. He just sat there for awhile and then--no kidding--waded out dragging something with him. He stood on a log and began to feed. I wondered if he had killed a duck and decided to paddle down and see.
I tied on a 5X tippet and a soft hackle and began to troll my way back. Halfway on my journey a fish hit the fly like a freight train. Pow! and the fly and tippet were gone.
We always think...but then again, it could have been.
I tied another soft hackle to the 4X and resumed trolling. By then the Eagle was keeping an eagle eye on me. I was finally too close and he vacated the premises. I tried to see what he was carrying but couldn't make it out.
Meanwhile, the Loons stretched their necks and fluffed their feathers and went about their business after successfully routing the Eagle.
I continued in to see if there were any feathers around the log. Just then I had another hit on the soft hackle. He wasn't huge, but he was strong and beautiful.
There were no feathers; it must have been a fish.
Nice one, Eagle. You landed your big one.

Saturday and Sunday Fishing Report: Messing About In Boats

"There's nothing...absolutely nothing...half so worth doing as simply messing about in boats." So says Ratty to Mole in The Wind In the Willows. Turns out it was true for us this weekend. I went out Saturday with Jeremiah, then with Lidia on Sunday.
Jeremiah had lost swimming privileges for a couple of days--better ask him about that--so he had some free time while Kim and Isaiah went to the pool.
It was HOT, but there were some trout jumping in the shade of these trees. But, though we tried various types of flies and techniques--for the brief time before Jeremiah got bored--and even though we had a couple of hookups that we lost in the weeds, catching trout soon slid way down on the priority list for this trip.

That's OK; I can handle that.

So we just started paddling around and messing about. Jeremiah has a strong paddle stroke, and likes to go fast. We went through the channel--deep now, with big rocks in view below--to the little pond at the very south end.

There Jeremiah asked to have the anchor at his end of the canoe. He made cool ascending fountains of bubbles as he heaved the anchor overboard, and found creative and fun uses for the weeds that came up with the anchor.

Finally it was too hot, and we decided to head into a nearby town for a cold drink on the way home. Jeremiah once again wanted to haul everything up from the canoe himself.

Self-portrait of a kid who actually had fun not catching fish:

The same was true for Lidia. The day was hot again, but very unsettled, with storms building in the west. When we got there, though, the water was calm.

Once again some fish were working, but once again we caught nothing.

Well, that's not exactly true; we caught a moth.

We saw something fluttering in the water and paddled over. Lidia scooped it up with the net and then held it--and let it crawl around on her--while its wings dried.

"There it goes!" she shouted suddenly, and, sure enough, I looked up and saw it flying high and heading for land. Lidia was quite proud to have saved its life.

Later we saw a turtle liesurely swimming along the surface, and Lidia grabbed the net and directed my paddling to bring her right up on him; but he saw us too soon and crash dived. The rest of the time Lidia was more interested in looking for turtles than trout.

That's OK; I can handle that.

Inevitably, the wind shifted to the north and increased in intensity, and a rain cloud loomed over us, so we reeled in one rod--Lidia is trying to catch the fly in the wind in order to put it in the hook-keeper--and trolled the other one back to shore.

We unloaded and loaded and headed for the valley.

We stopped along the way to take some shots of the gorgeous eastern sky, and commune with some cows.

But we didn't tarry; the rain was right on our heels.

I still find myself disappointed that the kids aren't catching fish. But I'm realizing--I admit, slowly, grudgingly--that's my agenda. So I vow next time to try real hard to make our top priority just some good messing about.

(You never know, maybe that will get the trout to bite.)

Friday Fishing Report: Time Well Spent

I had to work until 5:00 today, a rare occurrence, fortunately. But I was able to get to the lake by 7. Days are still long; that gave me a good three hours to fish.
I tied on the Lidia's Caddis, of course, to see whether the magic was still there.
It wasn't. Nothing that worked the other night worked this evening.
How 'bout that.
One of the fish I caught the other night was this one. You may have noticed his deformity. Something ate half his gill plate and left a goodly portion of his lower lip hanging. Life is hard in the depths. But this fish gave me the most beautiful rise of that enjoyable time. It was a perfect porpoising rise out of nowhere just ten feet from the float tube. Lovely.
This evening I took my time trying different flies and stalking the rare rise here and there in the shallows. Enjoyable, in its way, but fruitless this time. Still, some of those risers in skinny water have been very large fish. Worth the effort. And hooking a good fish in weed-choked shallows is a heady undertaking, and a worthy test of one's mettle.
Eventually I was fishing my newly-tied "mayfly." (See the last post.) Seeing its photograph underscored once again how a fly that looks pretty good to the naked eye looks a mess in a closeup photo. I imagined my brother John critiquing it, with it's fat body and undersized hackle.
My goal, actually, had been to tie a mayfly/midge fly--a "Maydge"--for those hatches when the midges and those little white mays are coming off at the same time. Did I succeed? Ask this guy.
I have no idea why he hit it, or what he thought it was. I didn't catch anything else on it. But it worked this time.
I saw two fish working steadily out in the middle of the lake, their dorsals waggling, beckoning to me. I paddled over. I discovered that there's a sunken island out there, and the tops of weeds were sticking out of the water.
By now I had Lidia's Caddis on again. I was able to get into position and drop it in front of one of the fish as he slurped along. He took it.
Maybe my timing was off, maybe he was so relaxed that his take was slower than I expected; whatever it was, I merely pricked him, and he was gone.
I cast to the other riser nearby and for the first time this evening--the wind was at my back--tangled my fly in the leader.
Splat! went the mess of line. Down went the fish. I waited, but neither came back.
I learned something while I was waiting. When the Loons call, at least at this time of year, it means that the Eagle is somewhere near. I heard the call and looked over to see the Eagle making several passes over the water, coming down once with a big splash. Each time he would approach the Loons they would call out a warning. They clearly weren't afraid, just territorial.
For being the King of the Birds, the Eagle gets no respect, as far as I can see. If it's not the Loons yelling at him, it's the Red-Winged Blackbirds and the Kingbirds dogging his every move.
When the Eagle made his last pass and headed across the lake to perch, he swooped down right over the Loons' heads. An eloquent taunt, if I've ever seen one.
As the light began to fail I paddled back to the scene of my triumph the other night to see if those tactics would work now.
Nope.
I finally began the paddle across the lake to my put-in, and drifted the fly behind me. This guy, at least, finally took a moving caddis.
It seemed like I had just lugged the float tube down the hill and through the woods to the water, and now it was time to lug it back up. It was a short time, but it was time well spent.

Tuesday Fishing Report: Change of Plans

My plan was to go back to the north end and see if I could find any more gulpers. I sat down this morning and tied up a couple patterns that I thought might help even the odds.
I drove into a downpour on the way up, and drove out of it a mile down the road; showers would continue to come and go throughout the evening.

I tied this on first, just because I like the looks of it.

It wasn't long before I spied a very nice fish working right up against the north bank. I cast my mayfly into his feeding zone but he apparently didn't like the looks of it. I looked more closely at the water's surface and saw little flurries of a tiny caddis over it, and the occasional bigger caddis popping out and zigzagging away.

So I tied on this pattern.

As I was tying it on the fish stayed active, and when I cast it toward his last rise ring he porpoised about six inches away--but going in the wrong direction. He was a nice fish, a big Brown. I stalked him carefully and finally got one rise. I think. There was a churning boil and a loud "ploop" either under my fly or right next to it. But no hookup. He might have been going for something next to the fly. Or he may have come up for it and refused at the last minute.

I'll never know. I never saw him again. About then it began to rain, and he went down. I stayed close and kept my fly along that bank for a long time, figuring I wanted my fly to be the first thing he saw when he decided to begin feeding on top again.

The rain quit and the wind began to swirl and then blew steadily from the west. Not typical. So now the sheltered bank was on the west side, across the lake from me. So I switched to Lidia's Caddis, the foam job that floats forever, and trolled over to the west bank.

On a whim I began casting in to the willows and stripping the fly back. It's a standard caddis tactic; the real bug pops out of the water and flutters along the surface for a fast getaway, so you make the fly move, too.

It worked. There was a swirl under the fly and I had a nice fish on--for a second. I was reeling up slack when he popped a wheelie and took fly and 5X tippet with him.

I went to 4X, asking myself the whole time why I hadn't started with 4X, and resumed casting and stripping. It kept on working. Every now and again you stumble onto the key to the treasure vault, and everything you do is golden.

It kept raining off and on, and the wind kept blowing, and I was getting chilly.

So I took a break and got my trusty Polartec fleece out of the truck. July 7 or not, I was glad to have it on.

Then it was back to the west bank and back to work.

I never did change flies again, and I never went back over to see if that Brown was up, or to look for gulpers.

Oh well. The best laid plans....