Lake Petocka, evening 4-24-2014

4-24-2014
Lake Petocka
Cloudy, 10 mph wind from NNW
Time fished: 6pm-9pm
Fish sought:  Brooder trout!
Fish caught: 8 Rainbow Trout, 2 Smallmouth Bass

I definitely SAW a lot more fish than I caught.  The action was not fast by any means....it was some work, but fun.  I used my switch rod, which allowed me to reach fish much further away than I would have been able to reach with my regular fly rod.

Plenty of surface activity.  I couldn't buy a fish on topwater, though.

I tried a lot of flies, and only caught fish on two of them....an unweighted black woolly bugger, and a Chili Pepper with a small beadhead.   Maybe I should have tried the Chili Pepper earlier in the evening.  I put in on just before dark, and caught 2 Smallmouth Bass on it about 20' from shore, and 2 trout on some long casts towards the middle of the lake.

Its fairly rare to catch a smallmouth bass in this lake, its rather bizarre that I caught 2 in the same evening.

At one point, I brought one fly right in front of me, watched a trout swim up from underneath, inspect it, refuse it, and swim away.  They CAN be finicky.

One of the last trout I caught was a pretty nice one and really chunky.  It was so dark, I didn't bother measuring or trying to photograph it.

LOVED that sunset last night!

Lake Petocka Stocker Trout, Fall 2013

I went flyfishing for "stocker trout" at Lake Petocka on Saturday, October 26.  It had been 8 days since they were stocked.
I fished from 9am-3:45pm.  Weather was mostly sunny, high temps reached around 50 degrees F.  Wind was 10-15 mph from the NNW.  I put some hip waders on and waded out to about knee deep.

I used a #8 Beadhead black Woolly Bugger for a good part of the day.  I experimented with a few other colors, caught fish on most of them, but the black seemed to be the trouts' preference on this day.

I ended up catching 67 Rainbow Trout.

I measured one at @ 14.25".  I landed one that I suspect was significantly larger, but it flopped off my fly as I was carrying it back to shore to measure it.  I could have tried to grab it, but I just let it go on its way.
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On Sunday, October 27, I flyfished the lake again in the evening..from 4pm to 6:45pm.  The last hour was fairly worthless.  I ended up with landing 21 Rainbow Trout.  The best fly this time was an unweighted white Woolly Bugger.