Tuesday Fishing Report: An Exceptional Day

It was a long, glorious day of exceptional beauty and exceptional fishing.
It wasn't dawn to dusk--I still hope to do that before the season closes at the end of October--but it was almost ten hours on the water.
It started clear and reasonably warm, and I was comfortable in shirtsleeves. Then the clouds began to build, and as they gradually swallowed the sun the temperature began to drop. I put on my rainjacket. Then a swirling wind began to blow, and it got downright cold. So I took a break in midafternoon and went to the truck for my fleece.
There was rain to the north and rain to the south, but not a drop on the lake. So I sat in the middle of it all and watched the beauty unfold across the September sky.

And there were fish. It was a day of non-stop action.

I stayed on top all day. There was never a sustained rise; all the fish came up out of nowhere. I stripped the fly fast or slow, let it sit, or drifted it slowly behind the float tube. I saw every kind of rise, from gentle little sips, to porpoising engulfments, to slashing hits.

I began with the hopper, fishing along the weedbeds on the shoreline, and caught two heavy rainbows in a row, both pushing 18 inches. Other fish followed. Later, the hopper soaked and bedraggled, and the action along the shoreline slackening, I switched to a light muddler with a gold body and fished the choppy water out in the middle. The fish were there, and I caught more. At dusk I tied on a black muddler with a silver body and caught even more. And I lost a few in the weeds, and had many, many strikes without hooking up.

I took pictures of all those I caught except for the two smallest ones.

I won't be so crass as to mention a number, but it was my best day ever on the lake.