As many of you know, I have reported on two occasions this about the decline of Amber Lake. I decided to give it another try tonight and am happy to report that things are looking up at the lake. I arrived at about 6:30 and the sun was still quite bright. Not much sign of any fish on top so I went deep with a bugger. After about 15 minutes, I had one on but was talking with somebody when it hit so didn't get the rod up in time. About a half hour later, I had another hit as I was taking off my sun glasses. The key seemed to be distracting myself so I had no chance what so ever of setting the hook and then they would hit. As the sun was going down the surface action started to pick up. I initially tried a bugger subsurface as the rises were still spread out a lot. After about 15 minutes of that I headed towards the shallow end of the lake and tied on a PMD as there were several spent spinners on the surface. Though fish were rising near me, nobody would take a look. As it was starting to get dusk, I noticed that some grey mayflys were coming off. I tied on a light grey number 16 and within two minutes was into a fiesty 16 incher. He put up a great fight and did a nice job breaking in my new 3 wt. In closing, the lake fished like I expected it to fish in late July. Not much action while the sun was overhead but a decent hatch at sunset. Had I rowed down to the shallow section earlier and found the correct pattern I think I would have taken several more fish. Mike W. Spangle.
