So on Saturday, neither the force of nature nor Mr. B were available. I did, however, meet a friend of Mr. B's so I will add him to my cast of characters. We will call him AJ.

We had intended to go out in our rafts, but given the weather, and audible had to be called. Neither of us liked the idea of being out in a raft in potentially freezing rain for 4 or 5 hours. So we decided to go to Lost Lake. It has a dock after all, so we would have a good home base, AND Mr. B and I had just been there and caught some fish a week before.

So I open the door Saturday morning and ... it's snowing. THAT'S not good. My car spins out on a 1 percent grade and 1/8th inch of snow!! What to do, what to do .... I know, I'll head over and wake up my mom at 6:15 on a Saturday morning and borrow her SUV! Sigh. Not the best idea, but my only hope. It works. I head that way. I get lost. AJ gets lost. We eventually get moving, about an hour behind schedule. It's cold. It was pretty, but very cold. We pound out the hike. When we get to the dock we take some pictures, I drop a worm, I start throwing the castmaster, and bam fish on! Sweet, it's 12 inches and pretty! Our last visit produced at least half in the 9-10 inch range, so starting off with a 12 is great. And there's snow on the dock to keep it cool! AJ starts casting a different color castmaster but doesn't have any luck. I get a nibble on my worm. I cast more, and BAM another, this one colored up for spawn and 13 inches! Feeling good about how this day will go, I stop casting and stick my hands in my pockets. As I said, it was COLD! As in, water freezing the eyelets on our rods shut cold!

The fish wont give AJ the time of day. He tries a few different colors of castmasters. I dont know what, but he was doing something technically different than I was. Speed of retrieve? Depth of retrieve? I dont know. I get 2 more bites on the castmaster. I get more nibbles on my worm. I think there is something wrong with my scent. I noticed this last time. Mr. B's nibblers hooked themselves up without him even picking up the pole. My nibblers just pull on the worm and then leave. Same thing this time. Lots of hand warming later, AJ has switched to a ... vibrax, I think. And salmon eggs on the bottom, which are totally ignored. Finally he gets a bite on the spinner! Fish on! It's taken him perhaps two hours for the fish to show him any love at all. He lands a gorgeous 12.5 inch cutt. Interestingly, we have 3 fish, and each one looks completely different from the others. They all have burning red throats, but one of mine is dark, one is medium, and AJ's fish is super light, almost like a kokanee. More time passes. I try to set the hook on a nibbler on my worm, feel nothing, reel up the worm and .... haha, a minnow. Maybe 7 inches tops. He's lip hooked, so I throw him back.

We cast a lot more. Or I do until I snagged my castmaster on the same dumb snag that I did last time! I think I got 1 more bite and AJ got 1 more bite, but no more fish.

I inflate and launch my raft. Last time we cut the line and tied it to the dock so we could come back and rescue the orange/silver castmaster. Well, now it has that lure, plus my perch pattern castmaster, both stuck to it. If you ever go to Lost Lake, the snag is directly out at an angle from the left corner of the dock. As it turns out, both are easy to rescue and come off the snag with little trouble once I pull them back past it on my raft.

As long as I'm out there, I paddle up to where the ranger said last time people catch most of the fish, up at the far right end of the lake. First cast I get a bite! Sweeeeeeet I think, this is going to be awesome! Well, not so much. After 45 minutes of fishing back toward and then past the dock, I get zero more bites. It turns out Lost Lake is pretty deep. Within casting range of the dock the max is about 32feet. But up at the end, I was getting sink times to the bottom with my lure of up to 19 seconds. I'm guessing around 40 feet deep on that end. Even up within 10 feet of the floating mats I was getting sink times of 16 seconds.

In any case, I get back to the dock, deflate my raft, AJ may or may not have had a couple more bumps he couldn't tell, the fish are completely ignoring his worm on bottom, and just like last time, the fish completely stop hitting lures after about noon or 1pm. About 4pm we pack up and head out.

Long story short, I caught 3, 1 released, and AJ caught 1. We got there late which sucks as the bite is best in the morning. we FROZE on this particular expedition. I'd say 1/3 of my fishing time was wasted with my hands in my pockets, or picking ice out of the eyelets on my rod. But we had no frostbite, no sprained ankles on the ice or hiking in the twilight, and now we know to double up worm on bottom after about noon. We would have rather been out on our original plan, but with the weather I really think this was the best choice.

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