I was up to the club early this evening with the flows running at 3500 CFS.  Not exactly great flows for fishing.     I was hoping to hook up with a few members, but they must have looked at the flows and decided it wasn’t worth the drive.   I did run into Joe Byrne and a guest who were just leaving as I was getting ready to fish the lake in my new Dave Scadden Renegade.   I decided to streamer fish with a fly my good friend Bob Burnham made for me.   In a word it’s big (5”s), white and has great action.    The water was certainly moving fast with huge swirls and eddies.   I started throwing the fly right up against the wall and stripping back about 10’.   The water was hitting the wall and swirling back towards the boat area.   All of a sudden I felt a yank that caught me by surprise.   It went straight for the deep water and I knew I had a huge brown on the line.   After about 10 minutes I got my first look at it and it was huge.  Fish always look bigger in the water, but I knew it was up there with the biggest fish I have caught at the club.    He put up a great fight  and I managed to wear him down to where I could use my legs to land him.   He was hard to handle and slipped out of my grasp before I could get a good measurement.   I am guessing he was a good 24’ + fish.   I need to start bringing a net.   I then fished the shore for about 20 minutes and hooked a nice rainbow in the 18’ range.   About 40 minutes and two nice fish.  Around 7:00 I saw some nice fish jumping on the far side of the lake.   I would have liked to throw some dry flies at them, but didn’t have my dry fly rod rigged,  I was satisfied and hard some work to do at the campground.

When I arrived at the campground I took a look at the water below.   It was moving fast and swirling.   There were a couple of places that I would have liked to try, but I didn’t feel like breaking out my rod again.  I unloaded some chairs for the cabins and inspected the cabins and potties.  Both were very clean and ready for use.  The cabins are locked but the keys are in the motor home hanging high on the cupboard on the right side as you go in.   We will be having Walt’s ACA camping group at the club in a few weeks and I would like the cabins locked and for members use only.   As a consequence if you use the cabins be sure to return the keys to where you found them and lock the cabins when you are done using them

 

There are a few projects that need to be completed before we bring up the Bear locker.   My truck has a load of fresh clean gravel that needs to be spread where the locker is going.   It’s time to move the motor home and set up the horseshoe pit.  Also a few  areas need to be scratched out for tent sites.  Nothing major, but enough to keep a few guys busy for a morning.   We are close to putting together the Bear locker down here.   We could use a hand with putting together the floor, walls and truss for the roof.    Bill Hangman will allow us to build the pieces down here at his facility and then we can drive them up to the club and slap them together in a few hours.   If you have some experience with a hammer and want to help out drop me an e-mail.

I also want to say that it was a beautiful evening at the club.  Not too hot and little wind.  Too many mosquitoes.  Bring some spay if you head up.

Tom Bartos