Since @Shawn Seeger made it over to Grant County, it's almost a sure thing that come March 1st, the weather is going to go in the toilet (just kidding). While many of us wait for that magic moment when Lenice, Nunnally, Dry Falls, Lenore, Martha, George, etc. open, there currently are other options out there.
I woke up this morning about 5:30, looked at the weather app on my phone and decided to grab another hour or so of Zzz's. It was 25F, I figured the Seeger-Effect™ may well have started refreezing some of the stillwaters, so not much point in hurrying out into the wind and cold (at least there wasn't any new snow).
Drifting along, my wife put together a delicious ochazuke breakfast using sockeye salmon leftovers, she also made me a nice onigiri with more of the sockeye. Fishing food.
Spring is coming, I found more empty adult beverage containers than desert flowers blooming.
It's three miles of hiking to fish the lake I was interested in trying out. The Channeled Scablands host almost countless lakes, the first one I came to had fresh ice from shore to shore. I was cussing the Seeger-Effect™ but as I rounded the hillside the deeper water was ice free. I kept hiking, working up a sweat. By the time I got to the water I was going to fish I was warmed up and ready to fish. Ma Nature had thrown a curve ball but it wasn't strike-3, the lake was muddied up from heavy winds the night before. Not having a secchi disk to determine turbidity I just pitched out a vampire jig under an orange and white "strike indicator". Three casts later the indicator went down, I lifted and was lucky enough to land a 14" rainbow.
I really like fishing jigs under a bobber even when I'm fishing a floating line with a 15'-20' leader. Today I was fishing a 7.5' Rio leader with about three feet of InvizX 8# tippet, strong stuff, no need for finese with turbid water. Maybe 20 minutes after I got to the lake the mirror like lake surface began to chop. I know the temperature didn't drop but the wind chill became almost unbearable and I forgot to bring along some HotHands. The wind did one thing in my favor: it created a nice chop and it caused the line to swing. Instead of casting and jigging the fly back in, I just let the wind work the fly. That technique (technique?) paid off quite well:
When the wind came up, mostly sunny decided to become mosly cloudy. I reeled up and went for a hike to warm up. I found one section of lake that was in lee of the wind and found quite a few chironomids. I wasn't able to get any trout interested so I continued on around the lake to a place where I know there's a deeper pocket; it didn't yield so much as a tap. That's okay, I had fun, caught a few fish. The long hike out warmed me up.
Vampire and wierd white jig thing - both caught a couple fish. I tied on an orange beadhead vampire jig and caught a fish. One brown trout liked the chartreuse bead head jig.
I woke up this morning about 5:30, looked at the weather app on my phone and decided to grab another hour or so of Zzz's. It was 25F, I figured the Seeger-Effect™ may well have started refreezing some of the stillwaters, so not much point in hurrying out into the wind and cold (at least there wasn't any new snow).
Drifting along, my wife put together a delicious ochazuke breakfast using sockeye salmon leftovers, she also made me a nice onigiri with more of the sockeye. Fishing food.
Spring is coming, I found more empty adult beverage containers than desert flowers blooming.
It's three miles of hiking to fish the lake I was interested in trying out. The Channeled Scablands host almost countless lakes, the first one I came to had fresh ice from shore to shore. I was cussing the Seeger-Effect™ but as I rounded the hillside the deeper water was ice free. I kept hiking, working up a sweat. By the time I got to the water I was going to fish I was warmed up and ready to fish. Ma Nature had thrown a curve ball but it wasn't strike-3, the lake was muddied up from heavy winds the night before. Not having a secchi disk to determine turbidity I just pitched out a vampire jig under an orange and white "strike indicator". Three casts later the indicator went down, I lifted and was lucky enough to land a 14" rainbow.
I really like fishing jigs under a bobber even when I'm fishing a floating line with a 15'-20' leader. Today I was fishing a 7.5' Rio leader with about three feet of InvizX 8# tippet, strong stuff, no need for finese with turbid water. Maybe 20 minutes after I got to the lake the mirror like lake surface began to chop. I know the temperature didn't drop but the wind chill became almost unbearable and I forgot to bring along some HotHands. The wind did one thing in my favor: it created a nice chop and it caused the line to swing. Instead of casting and jigging the fly back in, I just let the wind work the fly. That technique (technique?) paid off quite well:
When the wind came up, mostly sunny decided to become mosly cloudy. I reeled up and went for a hike to warm up. I found one section of lake that was in lee of the wind and found quite a few chironomids. I wasn't able to get any trout interested so I continued on around the lake to a place where I know there's a deeper pocket; it didn't yield so much as a tap. That's okay, I had fun, caught a few fish. The long hike out warmed me up.
Vampire and wierd white jig thing - both caught a couple fish. I tied on an orange beadhead vampire jig and caught a fish. One brown trout liked the chartreuse bead head jig.
