Stillwater Sight Fishing

Nick and I decided to stop on and check a spot before we headed to the river. We had no expectations, just a random act. What we found was an empty lake, zero wind and oh, the glass. So we rigged up and set off for the trek to the back side. Now at first glance it would appear that you can just walk the edge of the shoreline, as usual. The shoreline was covered in what appeared to look like hundreds of small Grey mossy brain-head corral looking dry moon's. It also appeared that you could just walk on these sponge looking things, however we grossly underestimated these things. Under it is mud, deeper than you ever want mud. The kind of mud that you need to keep a fast pace through or you'll sink forever mud, absolutely no stopping. We made it, finally covered head to toed in mud, I think we both fell... a few times. SO, there we are 11 inches taller covered in mud laughing uncontrollably. We were tired and we were more excited to fish. The mud adhered to the dry grass each step, it would also stick to my boots each step. Now hardened, we scraped layers of Earth off our boots, packs any anything else exposed... all while rigging up of course.

Here is my problem, every time I spend hours and hours tying. I really like it, it keeps me out of trouble. But every time I arrive to the water the next morning I use something entirely different. Oh the struggle : ) So the standard what are you going to use comes out and the discussion of floating or sinking lines and weighted, bead-head or unweighted flies is toss around. I chose a full sinking line with an unweighted Red Krystal Killer, the old timer fly. Nick chose a sink tip and a bead head Red Krystal killer.... Lock and load...

After Pounding the bank for a few minutes I decided to take advantage of the low lake and climb up to a higher vantage point. It about 20 or 30 feet difference. At the top I turned around to find fish cruising the shore. At water level everything looks the same. The sipping Trout barely make a surface disturbance and are often overlooked. From my view I can see many fish cruising the foam line. They were staggered down the entire shoreline. He he he he... So we spent the entire day walking the shoreline spotting for each other. Some of the takes were quite amazing. With the Red fly you could see the entire event unfold. A few times the flies were on the surface and the fish would jump out of the to attack it. Who knows how many fish were caught, almost everyone of them was spotted and stalked. One would call out the fish to the other and we traded of running and down the muddy embankment. It was a workout for sure but wroth every step.




I returned there again with Scott and we got them on top this time. Sipping dries, sight fishing at its finest. But this time we walked around the mud field.