Trout Lake Report: Love Story

It's a lovely evening.

You're feeling relaxed. You lean back in the tube like it's a lounge chair. It's the perfect place to enjoy a cool brew on a summer's evening.

You're in an unusual mood: you want the fish to come up in open water, and you want to catch them on a small dry fly. You have golden memories of summer days like that. The weather cooperates; it's calm here as the threatening clouds slide away to the north.

You think you might go down to the Drake Bank, but there are fish already dimpling the surface where the channel drops off into the open lake.

The Lady McConnell does the trick. You could do this all evening, and that's the plan.

Then the wind comes up and insists that you change plans.

But you don't. You let the wind push you back through the channel and around the bend.

The wind toots on the beer bottle, the tone getting progressively lower as you drift along.

You're seeking a lee shore, but you don't find one. It doesn't matter. You knot on a newly tied elk hair caddis and fish it around. You are totally absorbed in laying it out and watching it drift. You are unaware of the passage of time.

At some point you tie on a nymph, then a soft hackle, under an indicator. Then you fish the soft hackle without an indicator. The fishing is the thing.

A couple of float tubes have come through the channel and joined you in the south end. It's soon clear they are an actual couple. She fishes in open water, he haunts the shoreline. They come together and part again like a dance. Their quiet conversation and laughter carries to you over the water. You think they're young and in love.

Suddenly it's dusk. The wind is sitting down. You kick back through the channel to see what's happening at the drop off. As you get near, your coffee cup shows what's hatching.

Your wish has come true. The fish have come up, and pods of them are working up and down the lake. This is the first you've seen this phenomenon this year.

You have the little elk hair caddis on again, and you fish it. You see a few caddis, and some mays, mixed in with the clouds of midges. The fish come by and go away and come back and go away again. You get a few swirls and hits, but mostly the fly is ignored. At dark you finally get a solid take.

You kick back toward the take out thinking it has been a long, long time since you fished out an evening without once tying on a muddler.

The couple passes you in the channel. In the near dark you can just make out that their arms are linked and the float tubes are right up against each other. The couple is lost in conversation. You can hear in her low laugh that she is in love. They're kicking in unison, and they're making good time.

Brookie Lake/Trout Lake Report: Expedition

You've got all afternoon and evening, so you make it an expedition. You rattle right past Trout Lake and go on down the dusty, rutted road a couple more miles to Brookie Lake. You've been wondering about it, and aren't sure what you'll find there. You have a vague memory from a few falls ago of barren mud flats.

You're delighted to pull around the bend and find the lake full to the brim. No draw-down here, perhaps an enlightened approach to brook trout management. Not only that, with the weeds dying off there's more open and fishable water now than there was back in June when you were here last.

But you don't see a rise anywhere, and the campground is deserted. You wonder if there are still fish. You launch to find out.

You check out the channel to the spillway and don't see or raise anything. But a kingfisher flashes by, and you relax. You can trust that master fisher not to waste his time where there are no fish.

You kick out into the lake and begin to spy little brookie heads coming up here and there. You lay your elk hair caddis down in a handful of likely looking places. But it's not until you give it a fast strip that a brookie leaps clear out of the water and takes. You can never tell if they take it on the way up or the way down.

The strip is what they want, and you get more airborne hits and misses. Then a good fish just swirls up under it and takes it down.

Since you're stripping, you wonder if they'd take a muddler.

You find a little brookie-sized one on your fly patch, and the fly finds a brookie.

So you go ahead and tie on your trusty size 10, and fish of all sizes come to it eagerly.

It starts to sprinkle, and your rain jacket is in the truck. You're ready for a break, too, and you'd still like to get to Trout Lake. So you say your goodbyes and kick in. One more month in the season; you don't know if you'll get back here again in that time. But it's good to know that these jewels are still here, and that they'll be here waiting for you next spring.

It isn't long until you're kicking out into the channel at Trout Lake. You pick up where you left off and begin stripping the muddler. Almost immediately you catch a brookie-sized rainbow.

You move down the shoreline thinking a bright brown would go well with those brookies. But the fish you catch is a long and lean rainbow.

There are fish coming up as the day begins to wind down. You decide to stick with the muddler, and kick out into open water and chase rises. There are several boats out, and you maneuver around to stay away from their trolling lanes, and their loud conversations. You head back to the channel.

There are plenty of rises, but the fish seem to be small. Every once in awhile one will chase the muddler, and sometimes you hook one.

As it starts to get dark the boats head in, but you stay out. You're going to stay to watch the full moon rise over the ridge. You still stick with the muddler, and begin a slow kick to nowhere in particular letting the fly drift in the darkness behind you.

You love these times. It's just you and the lake. The bats are out, and pluck your line almost as if they think it's a funny joke on you. Ducks whistle by overhead, and an eagle passes close enough to hear the sibilance of his wingbeats.

And there are fish out there. You catch some, but, inexplicably, miss more.

But it doesn't matter. All this time the world of the lake is slowly filling with silver light, first the high clouds, then the sky, then the western mountains. You watch as the moonshadow creeps silently down those slopes, the world growing brighter with each foot it descends. You kick over to the western shoreline, to be where the moonlight will flood the lake's surface first. And then it wells up through the pines and spills down over the lake, and you. You begin the kick back to the truck, leaving a silver wake.