Another Basin Lake

Buzzy · Sep 20, 2023

I haven't been getting out like I should, decided last night it was time to get off my OLD butt. Loaded up the pickup with my float tube (I won't mention how many fly boxes), three rods, sonar unit, waders, fins, net and some food/water. I woke up to rain (thank you, rain! and "W" - a lot of that "W", no thank you). Unlike @Wayne Kohan's "drive up" lake, I backpacked in. No other cars at the parking lot.

My friend Rod had been into this lake three times recently and reported "big fish" but tough fishing. Tough fishing is spot on; it was slow. I started off with my deep water indicator rig and a black jig that usually works well. Zip, zilch, nada. I did fool one dark buck (17") on a blob but the blob bite seemed random and I didn't draw another take down so out came the type-7 full sink and one of these:

I kicked around casting and stripping and caught one trout about as long as the fly before I finally got a decent fish that measured 19", another dark trout.

About 1:00 PM @Starman77 was on the water with me. He went east on the lake, I went southwest and then west and got one more 17" fish on the fly above.

Rex and I swapped ends of the lake. I decided to kick up onto the skinny water end of the lake; it's really weedy up there but I found some areas where there was two or more feet of water above the weed tops. I'd switched to my third rod rigged with a floating line and 9' tapered leader to 4X with a size 14 rubber legged hares ear and managed to pick up five fish, three of them were dinks but two were nice bright 18" trout.

troutstalker · Sep 20, 2023

Hell yeah buddy!!! Way to bring em in!

Wanative · Sep 23, 2023

Atta boy Pat.

Northern · Sep 23, 2023

Nice, Pat!
I was out that way for bass T-Th, but woke up Thu to raindrops being whipped against the van's windows... so I wimped out and opted to hit the Yak on the way home instead.
Guess it's time to bring the trout lake gear next time!

Buzzy · Sep 23, 2023

Northern said:
Nice, Pat!
I was out that way for bass T-Th, but woke up Thu to raindrops being whipped against the van's windows... so I wimped out and opted to hit the Yak on the way home instead.
Guess it's time to bring the trout lake gear next time!

We must have driven past each other - Rex spent the night in his Outback and braved the wind the next day. He's much, much tougher than I am..........

Porter2 · Sep 23, 2023

Nice looking arsenal…. 5-6-7?

Bambooflyguy · Sep 23, 2023

Hey….where’s your bamboo rod Pat??

Buzzy · Sep 23, 2023

Porter2 said:
Nice looking arsenal…. 5-6-7?

Two 5's and a 6.

Starman77 · Sep 24, 2023

It has been fun catching lots of pink salmon over the past month, but I sure was looking forward to getting back out on the desert basin seep lakes. The lake temperatures have finally cooled down to around the 65 degree range, so cool enough to safely fish for rainbows. It was great seeing and fishing with @Buzzy again! Here's a nice sunset at the lake we fished; I'm sure if you've been there you'll recognize the location:

As Pat mentioned, the fish were mainly in two size classes:

All the larger rainbows were slightly dark for me, like this one:

However, they fought decently, but not like in the spring when they really put up a good fight. My fly patterns are not as fancy as Pat's, but they still work just fine. I mainly caught fish on this small leech pattern, using a dubbing color I haven't used previously (the fly slims down a lot when wet, and the dubbing looks more like dark brown than black):

On Thursday, it was admittedly quite windy, but the good thing about fishing the small seep lakes is that the wind doesn't have space to pick up a lot of speed on the lakes. The wind also helps keep the mosquitoes at bay, so heavy winds aren't all bad. I went to another seep lake and was the only one at the lake all day, but the fishing was not as good as the lake we fished on Wednesday. I believe the gear fishermen in the spring mostly fished out the lake; that Power Bait is so effective. On Opening Day this past spring, I ran into 15 gear anglers and 2 fly casters out there. There's a reason I don't normally fish on Opening Day!

But I did see a couple of Black-crowned Night Herons there, which was really cool. There are also some wildflowers still blooming, like this non-native invasive called Purple Loosestrife, which adds a lot of color to the lake shorelines:

In the above photo, you can also see some small white asters, and in the background, some western goldenrod.

Be advised that some of the seep lakes will close at the end of September, so check the regs carefully to be sure you don't get fined. The window of opportunity for these early closure lakes is very narrow, essentially about a two week window from the hot summer temperatures to the end of September.

Rex