Still, it was a nice, sunny morning and early afternoon, with reasonably low winds.
Fishing was S-L-O-W. Very few "rings" from surfacing fish within casting distance of shore. No big groups of fish. In talking with some folks, there was some great fishing a week ago, and reports are that folks were keeping a lot more than their legal limits. I even talked to a couple guys out there who said they had caught their limits (a week ago Saturday), took them home, then came back. They left it to my imagination as to whether they kept any on their 2nd trips of the day. But anyway, all the harvesting (both legal and illegal) seems to have cut the trout population down considerably over the past 3.5 weeks. That's good from the DNR's point of view that the fish get "used" and enjoyed. It just makes fishing a lot more challenging.
Most folks I saw out there yesterday who were using lures or live bait didn't catch ANYTHING. The best I saw was one guy using minnows...he took home 4 trout.
Comparitively, I did well and caught 9 trout on flies....8 Rainbows and 1 Brookie. I stayed about an hour-and-a-half extra trying to catch "1 more fish to make it an even 10"....but it was dead, and it didn't happen.
I tried surface patterns as well as nymphs under an indicator, but didn't catch fish on them. I did best with streamers like beadhead woolly buggers and simple patterns using gold mylar tubing bodies with a marabou tail. Although fish were very rarely visible from shore, I caught almost all of my fish within 15' of shore.
Fishing can be a fun activity for those on a budget. With the economy on a downturn, this might be the perfect thing to do instead of going on an expensive vacation.
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