Im trying to learn how to fly fish and I had a meeting in anacortes tonight, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to fish a new water. I had a little under 2 hours to be at the lake, and I mostly wanted to practice casting, so I thought about just fishing from the launch shore, but since the wind was blowing pretty hard right to left across it I decided it would be better to put together my boat and get the wind behind me.

I started out by anchoring near the far bank and casting beaded wooly buggers toward the shore on type 3 intermediate line. A couple of surfacing fish confirmed I was in a good spot, but nothing took an interest in my fly. Next I tried a Chironomid rig with indicator and 20' leader, which was almost impossible for me to cast even with the wind behind me, and with only one anchor the boat was spinning a bit too much to have a very still presentation. With about 20 minutes of fishing left I returned to the sinking line and an olive wooly bugger and made a slow troll along the lakeshore back to the launch, no takers.

After putting my rod away and getting ready to hit the beach I rowed in to find about a dozen big rainbows chilling in about 3' of water directly in front of the boat launch. I thought very hard about getting my rod back out, but I decided it was better to make my 6pm meeting on time and come back for those trout another day.

When I arrived I had the lake to myself. Shortly after a drift boat and belly boat showed up. I was too far away from them to tell if they had success, but the eagles were very active over the drift boat, which might have meant he had fish on.

Very cool lake, I will be back many times to learn how to flyfish this year.

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