My best day at Amber so far this year saw me catch 15 fish in a little under
two hours. This took place between 7:45pm and 9:30 pm on May 14th. The fish
were actively feeding on emergers well after dark. My fly of choice was a #12
PDC, which has a piece of bright foam that I assume fish can easily home in on
during low light conditions. All of the fish I caught that night were over 12
inches, with the highlight being a beautiful 16" red bellied cutthroat. My
float tube was lityerally "slimed" by the time I got out of the water.

Our weather has been less than stellar lately, and as a result the fishing has
slowed down. Insect hatches have been sporadic and the fish haven't been in an
aggressive feeding mode much of the time. I can only go so long without
fishing regardless of the weather, so I decide to try my luck on May 24th in
the afternoon. I trolled and stripped a variety of patterns for about an hour
with only one fish (on a water boatman), and then switched over to a
chironomid. After another hour of fishing chironomids with only one more fish,
I decided to head back to the launch. As I neared the launch, I managed to
pick up a 14" rainbow on an olive wooly bugger. I figured hey, this makes
today easier to swallow, and I continued to troll towards the launch. I
immediately hooked into a similar fish, and decided that maybe I was leaving
too early. Fish began to actually fin on the surface without rising, so I
assumed they must be eating emergers. However, none of the other folks on the
lake were having any luck with emergers or dries (that I saw anyway), so I
decided to stick to my wooly bugger. It was a good thing I did because the
fish began to absolutely hammer it. I caught 4 fish on 4 casts by casting into
the pods of finning fish and immediately stripping in. The fast fishing
continued until I had caught about twelve fish total. This isn't an
exceptional fish total for Amber considering I fished for about 3 hours, but
10 of the fish were caught in a span of about 45 minutes. I'll take 2 hours of
slow fishing anytime for that kind of action on hard fighting, leaping
rainbows. Amber is truly a testament to what a fishery can become with some
reasonable management. Amber will continue to pump out action like this
throughout the summer, while the lakes under general regulations will be long
forgotten until next year.

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