Friday Fishing Report: Preparedness Is All

I made a long afternoon and evening of it. Took the van so I wouldn't have the stress of dealing with the truck. Its recent troubles have taken a toll on my peace of mind.
I thought it might be crowded due to the long weekend, but there were only two guys bank fishing when I got there, and they soon left. (One said, "They're really hitting on nightcrawlers! We got eight nice ones." Of course, bait is verboten. I think they were just having fun with the fly fisher.) A family stopped by with their kids for awhile, but they also soon wended their way down the road.
I started trolling the little bugger and hooked a small fish. What do you know, he managed to get into the weeds and came undone. The lake is down some more, and the weeds are close to the surface, and are a major factor in the fishing.
Maybe that's why I seemed to be weed obsessed in the next few pictures I took.

That first one was my shadow taken above water. This is my shadow taken under water. Trout live in a green, green world.

There was one more atypical visitor: this Great Blue Heron. Of course, you can't see it very well, but it haunted the shallows for awhile and reminded me again of what real patience and persistence is.

It had been breezy most of the afternoon, but it calmed way down come evening. I switched to a dry--a little Stimulator--and checked to see if the fish were hitting hoppers again.

Nope. I confess to being at a loss to explain that. This season is certainly different from last season, when hoppers and Stimulators were the fly of choice. I will continue to hold out hope that with cooling air and water temperatures the trout will be ready to start going for big, meaty flies again.

But not only were they not hitting big flies, they stopped rising altogether. It was eerie. I don't recall seeing this south end so dead. There were plenty of midges coming off, and I saw a couple of callibaetis spinners on the water, but no hatchers, and no caddis.

I made the decision to wait for a hatch--any hatch--and the rise that would surely follow, or the rise that would finally start going after the midges. I rigged up a strike indicator with a tiny tan emerger on a short dropper and went to work.

Here's me hard at work...waiting...and waiting... and waiting....

That's pretty much how the day ended. Oh, I trolled some more once it was too dark to see even the indicator, but the only bumps I got were from bats hitting the fly line.

But I really enjoyed myself. "Preparedness is all," someone has said. True, true. I was prepared, that was all; but it was enough for a good evening.