Friday, October 21, 2011

Bass Boatin'

On Wednesday I got an offer to join a friend of a friend on his bass boat for the last trip of the year to one of his favorite fishin holes.  I've never fished from a bass boat, let alone fly fished for native Cutthroats and non native Lake trout,  from one so I figured what the heck. 

The day started with meeting at 6:00am to try and be on the water by 9:30am.  I was warned to bring plenty of warm clothes as the wind chill is pretty intense zipping across a lake of 42F water at 30mph with ambient temps in the 30s.  I complied and piled on layer after layer, including snow pants and my winter parka as we headed out on the lake. 

My host had been given a tip by an old timer as to where we could find spawning Lake trout.  These fish get very large...30lbs would not be out of the question if we could find them.  Unfortunately the area he pointed us to was devoid of all life and all necessary elements to host much life.  No rocks, no weeds, no contour to the bottom of the lake, no fish.  We trolled around the area for a couple of hours, landing one random Cutthroat before neither of us could stand it any longer. 

My host took me to a cove that often has plenty of fish in shallow and clear water that provides for exciting sight fishing.  We found a few and were able to get some to play.  We worked our way around his usual loop and caught quite a few Cutts like this one in the 2.5-3lb range. 

We worked pretty hard to try and find fish and ended up landing perhaps 25 total between the two of us with a few better fish in the 4bl-4.5lb range like this one.

As we headed back to the marina the chop on the water got pretty intense and the corresponding spray resulting in me being bathed in 42F water.  It was much like I would imagine a Disney ride from hell.  All in all it was a good time and fun to experience something different. 

The juxtaposition of the sparkly bass boat on trout lake at over 8000ft is priceless. 

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