Banner Pits Trout, 4-12-2014

Saturday was a beautiful day..  Temperatures rose to  84 degrees F, it was sunny most of the day, and the wind didn't get  too strong until early afternoon.
After a friend reported catching a Brook Trout at Banner Pits a couple days earlier, I decided to make the trip down there to see if I could catch one.  Spoiler alert: I didn't catch a Brookie.

I arrived at the lake @ 10:30am.  The park folks had been doing controlled burns to clear out some underbrush from the forest on the steep slopes surrounding the lakes.  There was still lots of ash, some smoke, I could occasionally hear trees and branches falling in the woods, and I saw some fires still burning.

I decided to hike into a bay I've always seen but never fished before.  There was a couple guys in a boat there when I arrived.  They moved on after 45 minutes or so.  After they left, I caught a small bluegill.  There weren't as many trout here as I had hoped, but I stayed there until 4:30 pm anyway.

There was a goose sitting on eggs in the area I was standing to fish.  I walked right up onto her without seeing her, before she stood and hisses at me.

She let me fish right next to her throughout the day without any more trouble.

Anyway, I tried a lot of flies.  The ones that  seemed to work best had either a small beadhead, or a glass beadhead, or were unweighted.  I think the water was clear enough that the fish could spot and attack the fly from several feet below it.  I had 4 fish break my 8lb tippet, which was very unusual, and the trout also seemed to spit the fly quickly here, which resulted in me missing/losing a LOT of strikes.  I ended up landing just 12 Rainbow Trout.  Could have been worse, but also could have been much better.  They were beautiful fish, though.

A couple additional interesting things happened on this fishing trip.  First, a gentleman and lady were walking through the charred woods on top of the steep bank on the opposite side of the bay I was fishing.  At first I thought maybe they were going to come down to where I was and fish. They walked until I believe they saw me.  Then, the gentleman backed further into the trees, facing the bay.  The young lady turned to face him, which put her back towards me.  She dropped her pants.  I thought maybe she needed to go to the bathroom...it happens.  But she didn't crouch.  I assume the gentleman photographed the splendor from his side, while I just enjoyed the view I was afforded.  She pulled up her pants and they meandered out of sight.

About 10 minutes later I heard walking up on that bank again, and thought maybe they were back.  But it turned out to be 2 fellows who were coming down to fish near me.  As soon as they set down their gear, one said, "I'm going to have a cigar."  Well, I was already halfway into one myself, so I turned struck up a brief conversation about how nobody would mind if we started a forest fire today, seeings how it was all in ashes already.  Turns out, this was Joe.  Joe asked if my name was David.  Yes.  He said he enjoyed my website/blog!  Well...how cool is that?  And then he got out his flyfishing gear and started casting.  Hey, I like this guy!  Enjoys cigars AND flyfishing!  :)
Well, Joe, it was certainly nice to make your acquaintance!  Hopefully we'll run into each other fishing many more times in the future. I told you I snapped a candid photo of you and was going to put it in my blog.  Turns out the picture was horribly overexposed for some odd reason.  I did my best to fix it, and then thought it looked decent once I added some effects to it.  I apologize it didn't turn out better, but its still a pretty cool shot I think.