Flyfishing Report, 11/20 & 11/21/2012

11/20/2012


I took the day off work and fly fished Lake Petocka this morning.  22 Rainbows.  Now I've caught 12% of those trout.  

Many like this one were caught on a Chili Pepper fly pattern.

I left decent action there to fish the trout stocking at Ada Hayden at noon.  The DNR guy said he counted 95 anglers there!  It was chaos.  I was practically bumping elbows with people on both sides ( I was there first...they crowded me).  I caught 5 fairly quickly and decided it wasn't fun anymore, so I talked with the DNR guy for awhile.

Today's fishies put me over 3,000 fish for the year for the first time EVER!


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11/21/2012

I took the day off, and Dale had the day off as well, so we agreed to do some fly fishing for trout again.  I suggested we visit lake Petocka.

Dale arrived at 7am.  By the time I got there at 8am, Dale had already caught 8 Rainbows.  We gave up 2 hours later.  I had caught 7 trout(including 2 on my first 2 casts! This gives me 12.5% or 1/8 of the trout stocked here so far!).  Dale had not caught any more, and between us we had covered pretty much the entire perimeter of the lake.  The fish activity died.

I asked Dale if he wanted to try Ada Hayden lake.  He was game.  We got there and wind was howling out of the South, waves pounding the north shoreline.  We started fishing there.  A dozen others were also fishing there.  We saw one trout caught.  We started walking/ fishing our way around the north lake in a counterclockwise direction.  At the halfway point, we hadn't caught a single fish....and Dale brought out the venison sticks and cherry Cokes.  That really hit the spot!

Re-energized, we continued our circuit of the lake.  At about the 4/5ths point, we finally found trout.  Lots of them.  Dale got on a pod and immediately started catching fish.  I got off to a slower start.  Dale was the first to 10, and 20, and 30, and 40.  I caught and passed him at 43.  We finally called it quits at 3pm.  My final tally at Ada Hayden was 62 Rainbows, while Dale ended on 50.  What started out looking like a "skunk" ended up very satisfying.  Between us, we'd caught 5% of the stocked trout in about 2 hours!

Many times there would be 3, 4, or 5 anglers fishing the same pods of fish.  Dale and I with fly gear out-caught the spin fishermen by a very substantial margin.  Several of them mentioned that next time they weren't going to be leaving their fly rods at home!

While there, I heard interesting stories of some good Wiper fishing at Ada Hayden this past summer.

This was the sunrise looking out my front door on 11/24/2012.