Trout Lake Report: Doing Just Fine

You fly the coop. Life is getting complicated, and you need a lake break. You get there early because you know you'll need to leave early. You tie on your big orange muddler. Time to break it in; time to get it blooded.  

Fronts are colliding all over the place, and the wind is roaring. It's out of the south, but it's cold. You bob through the channel to its north end and fish the foam lines, and between the foam lines. You remember good fish in the past just waiting for something big and juicy to blow down the channel. But there's nothing there today willing to take a big orange muddler.

So you kick over to the shoreline and fish the open water between tangled weed mats. You get a chase, and another one, and finally a hookup. All is well.

You aren't the only fisherman on the lake. There are three boats on the north lake and four on the south. But your current favorite shoreline is open so you kick back through the channel to the south lake, lean back on the wind, and work your way down.

Nobody home today. So you round out into open water and slowly drift the muddler behind you as you let the wind push you back to the channel.

The wind calms a little as you go, and fish begin to show themselves. You get some big swirls and misses on the muddler. Then a fat rainbow nails it.

You're cold and you need to leave soon, but you wonder if anything brown might be stirring now along the rocky point where they have stirred before. You give it a shot, but everything stays blue.

You kick across the channel and reel in. You'll leave it to the boys in the boats. You wish them luck.

Nice job, Big Orange Muddler. You did just fine.

You head for home and the complications of life. But you're doing just fine, too.