Early Lake Report: Time For a Road Trip

You go back to Early Lake in the evening. Looking forward to catching a few little trout.

You fish rises by the intake.

You fish rises out in open water.

You fish rises around the lovesick grebes.

You fish rises until the sun goes down.

You fish rises until Jupiter comes out.

They're all bluegills. Not a trout to be found. The gills are out early this year.

Don't want to be a trout snob. But you tie up a handful of Rocky Ford flies.

Time for a road trip.

Early Lake Report: Fools for Fishing

April Fools' Day, and it's Opening Day on one of the local lakes, one you call Early Lake. A whole bunch of fools, you included, decide that, out of everywhere they could be, and everything they could be doing, they want to be there fishing. They're fools for fishing.

Spring is busy opening things up at the lake. New leaves are filling in the landscape.

The inlet stream is rushing into the lake, filling it with snowmelt.

The tube is ready and waiting. So are the stockers, you're told. Time to launch for the first time since Halloween.

The lake has a charm of its own here at the west end. It feels good to be roving over the waves again searching out fish.

You troll a bead head prince nymph, stretching out your long-unused kicking muscles. The sun is warm, and the water is pretty.

You cover a lot of lake, kicking against the stiff wind. You try nymphs, woolly buggers and leeches. You get one bump.

You really would feel like a fool if you got skunked.

Then evening comes, the wind sits down, and you see a flash on the far side. A fish jumped.

You kick over and find a smorgasbord of midges spread on the water and hundreds of hungry stockers making the most of it. Where have they been?

Soon pods of fish are cruising and rising everywhere. There must be thousands. You catch plenty on little dries, but they aren't pushovers, and they don't want to have anything to do with the net.

When you decide to head for home they're still busily feeding.

You probably haven't made your last trip to Rocky Ford, and there's a cutthroat lake down there that's calling your name. Once Trout Lake opens up at the end of the month you'll go there. But it's nice to know that you can get back to this lake in just 20 minutes any time you get the urge to catch a few trout on a dry fly.

That's a good thing for someone who's a fool for fishing.

Early Lake Report: Time For a Change

It had been a long time since I had gone fishing. OK, compared to geologic time it wasn't that long. But time is relative, and in "fishing time" more than a week, especially at this time of year, is a lonnnggg time. I was beginning to feel a little like this guy.

I went back to Early Lake. The willows are almost fully leafed out, and the catkins are everywhere. The word comes from the old Dutch word katteken, meaning "kitten" because the cylindrical flower clusters resemble a kitten's tail.

I look at this and think of a lot of kittens without tails.

It was a nice day, coming on the tail end of a string of superb bluebird days in which the temperature climbed to the middle 80's. Coming on the end of the string it was still warm but signs of change were evident: high cirrus veiling the sun and forecasting heavier cloud cover on the way, and a brisk wind out of the northwest.

I started out trolling, and then tried a nymph under an indicator, but soon gave up on both techniques. Because of the warm weather, the weeks of outboard boat traffic, and the wind, the water was full of floating weeds (and catkins) which quickly fouled the hook. The worst was the "filamentous green algae," commonly known as pond scum. This was the spyrogyra , bright green and slimy, that floated under the water in fly-seeking blobs.

So I affixed a recently-tied muddler to my tippet and began casting and stripping through the algaeic minefield. I started getting bumps and splashes right away, and then I heard the signature little lip-smacking pop as a fish missed the fly. Bluegill. Sure enough, when I slowed down the strip a little I started catching them left and right.

I like to think I'm not an elitist. I like bluegill on a fly rod. I had fun catching them on this day when the trout were holding out. And they are an important part of the food chain on many a lake or pond, as evidenced by this red-necked grebe who was also catching them (and having a comically difficult head-bobbing, throat-stretching time swallowing them.)

Having said that, I do prefer that bluegill not inhabit trout lakes. Early Lake, though intended to be a trout lake, has been the target over the years of vigilante stocking of warm water fish by persons who apparently find the concept of "trout lake" to be snobbish. So it is today a true piscatorial democracy where all fishermen are created equal. So be it. By this time every spring I've been here the bluegill are coming into their own. So I caught bluegill and enjoyed it. (Good practice for trout, I always think.)

But I was happy when I picked up a random trout in the midst of the schools of bluegill. The bluegill were feisty when hooked, putting on a good show for their size and weight, but they couldn't compare with the trout, even the smallish stockers I caught. These ran and jumped and made a fine ruckus of it before I got them netted.

The wind died down as the sun went down, and the lake calmed. I was still hoping for a good evening rise of trout. There were midges and caddis popping all over.

I tied on a deer hair caddis and looked for rises that never came. So I cast the fly into the pocket water between the mats and drift lines of the becalmed weeds and debris.

And I caught fish on almost every cast--all bluegill.

Time for a change. If I want to catch bluegill I can always come back to Early Lake. But I want to catch trout: fine rainbows, and sleek browns. It has been six months since I caught a brown.

Trout Lake finally opens on Saturday. I'll be there.

Early Lake Report: The Urge To Catch a Trout

March felt like April, so it shouldn't surprise us that April has come in like March. I took the float tube out for the first time this year on a chilly, very windy afternoon last Friday.

This is a local lake that opens on April 1st. It provides a good place to get back into good floating form by the last Saturday in April when Trout Lake and all the other local waters open up.

It offers fresh little stockers who are easy, but not pushovers.

On this blustery day they were laying low, but could be enticed to hit a stripped or trolled bead head woolly bugger.

The real attraction of the day was the hundreds and hundreds of violet-green swallows flitting, darting, and swooping everywhere. There is no color like that iridescent violet-green when they turn glinting in the light--something I have not yet been able to capture with my point-and-shoot camera.

There was high overcast when I arrived at the lake, and within a couple of hours it was thickening, and rain showers could be seen ranging over the land. The wind was still blowing hard, the temperature was dropping, and I was getting cold. The swallows would go on until dark, but this time I was ready to call it a day.

So I caught one more fish and kicked for shore.

It took me 20 minutes to get home instead of the two hours it took from Rocky Ford. And the nice thing is it will only take me 20 minutes to get back the next time I get the urge to catch a trout.