For what seemed like the first time in forever, I finally had an opportunity to return to my favourite rainbow trout lake with Alex. We had planned to meet late Friday afternoon, fish that evening, and then spend all of Saturday chasing rainbows as well. However, a few days prior to the trip, I suddenly realized that Saturday would also mark the opening of bass in this region. Hurray! Seeing as this lake is teeming with largies, we now had a viable alternative plan if the still-water trout bite was off.
Lucky for us, on Friday, this was not the case. We managed to get on the lake around 3:30pm, and immediately started seeing active, feeding trout. For the first half an hour or so, we stuck to our routine flies in this lake – Woolly Buggers in various colours. Although these flies typically attract the trout here, we weren’t finding any luck with them today. On one of our final drifts in the boat, we watched as a giant baitfish school swarmed beneath us – something we have never witnessed in this lake. That got us thinking, and we immediately transitioned over to nice, meaty streamers for these still-water rainbows. We were giddy just tying these streamers on, as Alex nor I have really managed to catch large trout on big streamers. Well, that would certainly end today! The first fish came very quickly after our first change on a large muddler minnow pattern:
This was an average fish for this lake – nice to see them growing healthily year after year!
While the GoPro was attached to our net, it managed to snap a pretty neat pic of our team!
… as well as the release, of course!
Eventually we tied on some even larger patterns – patterns we would typically use for chasing gar in the flats of Lake Ontario. Still, the hungry trout wanted more!
.. and again, the release 
We finished our time on the water at around 7pm (much to our dismay, just as the action was picking up even more!) in order to meet my family for some dinner. One thing I definitely need to do is tie up some large articulated patterns with stinger hooks for these fish. Although we managed some nice trout, we had many missed fish just due to the lack of a stinger hook. The trout were chasing the flies, striking from the back, and just catching the tail of the longer streamers, and not the hooks. Regardless, this was an adrenaline rush! Twice I had the opportunity to cast to a fish feeding on the surface, distract it with my streamer, watch it create a wake in the lake’s surface by racing after my fly, and striking the streamer. It was an absolutely amazing experience!
