Trout Lake Report: More Bats Than Fish?

You go back to the drop off the very next day.

You're drawn to deep, open water.

You tied up a couple of marabou muddlers with gold tinsel bodies, one black and one natural deer hair. You used to use this style more, and you have memories of big fish chasing down a fast strip right in this very spot.

You work the black awhile, stripping it through the riffles. The Brown you caught on the last trip came out of nowhere, breaking through the riffles just five feet from your quasi-hopper, so you stopped stripping and waited and he did a classic porpoise on the fly. You hope for more of the same, but you don't get it. Every day is different.

You go back to the weed beds and start dapping the quasi-hopper into likely looking pocket water and along the edges.

A little Rainbow whacks it. Looks like he's been whacking other things, too, or has gotten whacked himself, with that boogered up lip.

You go back to the same area and get another hit. This fish takes you into the weeds. You try to horse him out, but he breaks off. A bouquet of weeds floats up to the surface, a parting gift from the trout.

That's it for a long stretch. The catching has been streaky this summer.

You enjoy the quiet--the campground is deserted, so you don't have to contend with droning generators--and the graceful descent of evening.

Midges are coming off in clouds, and a few fish come up randomly. You go to an old foam yellow jacket fly--the orange version--and flog the water. One fish goes for the promise of a bigger meal.

Bats are out in numbers again, as they are every evening. You chuckle about catching that bat the night before.

Then you cast out, start a strip, and catch another one. Some days are the same.

This one is hooked in the butt, so he can still fly. As you reel in he launches himself into the air and circles around the tube a few times like a little bat kite. You pull him down into the water.

He can also swim--bats are good if ungainly swimmers--so he makes for the tube.

He reaches up with his little hook and hangs onto the stripping apron for dear life. The night before you had to take your forceps, grasp the bat's wing with it, and work the fly out by pulling on the tippet. That meant getting your hand closer to a possibly pissed off bat than you would normally like to. This time you let the bat hold on while you yank the fly out of his butt. He seems to want to stay on the tube for awhile, but you shake him off. He plops into the water, spreads his wings, and flies away.

The fishing is really slow when you start to catch more bats than fish.