First time back to Roosevelt since 5/1 & 5/2 and it wasn't a disappointment. A summer full of commitments have kept me too busy to work in some fishing time, but the commitments are now behind us for the most part, and it was time get on the water!

We invited our good friends Harold and Pam to join us as they'd never been on the water at Roosevelt, and they readily accepted our offer.

We launched at Seven Bays and headed directly to Split Rock whereupon I sent out the leaded line rigs with our tried and true Frisky Jenny flies. Since surface temps were 69°, I ran them out 165' to get a little deeper than normal. Not more than 10 minutes into fishing, we had the first one on and Pam got the honors of reeling it in. A nice 13" rainbow with plenty of fight. She caught two more in rapid succession and then a slight lull when my wife brought one in. Each fish was bigger than the last. We put 4 in the cooler in about an hour and then the clouds cleared, the sun came out, and the bite was off. We decided to do some sightseeing while heading up to the mouth of the San Poil. There is a nice, one spot campground just east of San Poil where we decided to stop for lunch and let the dog out for a bit.

After a great shore lunch, we motored across to the San Poil and I set up the downriggers since we now had clear skies and plenty of sun - my nemesis and worst possible fishing conditions at Roosevelt. It wasn't 5 minutes after sending the gear down when a husky 14" rainbow tripped the release. My wife grabbed the rod to reel in what turned out to be our biggest, and last, fish for the day.

We used our standard Roosevelt setups, a perch pattern Frisky Jenny fly on one rod and a Trick or Treat Frisky Jenny fly on the other. Both caught fish, but the perch pattern "Lenny Special" caught 3 to the other's 2. However, the Trick or Treat brought in the two largest trout for the day.

Leaded line outfits we set at 165' with a 50' leader. Flies were tipped with a third of a crawler. I also ran long line mono outfits in the morning with a couple of Rip'n Minnow plugs, neither produced, but I didn't expect them to with the warm surface temps. Downriggers were set at 30' with releases 5' above the ball. I ran 50' of mono behind the releases and the above reference flies. Thermocline was 27' in the mouth of the SanPoil.

Surface temps were 69° in the morning warming to 72° around 3pm when we called it day. Morning conditions were light rain with overcast clearing to sunny and warm late morning until mid afternoon when clouds returned. Surface conditions were almost flat calm in the areas we fished.

First photo is Pam's first ever Roosevelt rainbow. She didn't want to hold the fish, so I held it for her. ;-) Second photo is of our guests at Goldsmith campground on our lunchbreak. Great day, great company, and fish in the cooler - I couldn't ask for more. :-)

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