We, my brother Gary, a friend Ryan and myself, went over to lake Aenis
thursday, for a long weekend of fishing, and came back monday. As we've
come to expect from Aenis the fish were large, the smallest being 16" and
the Largest approximately. 23" , the measuring tape on our bucks south forks
stops at eighteen, with girth to match.
The regulars who summer at the lake advised us to use hares ears, a olive
woolly bugger with the top hackle trimmed or a tan bead head nymph, but as
we had started the year of lake fishing with the Olive Willie, most of our
fishing is in the rivers for Steelhead/Salmon/Sea Run Cutthroat, and figured
we would start with what had got us there. Well the Olive Willie Worked so
well we never changed. One difference to the original pattern, when I tie
it I use dyed ostrich plumb and xfine oval tinsel twisted together instead
of chenille, ala Alec Jackson.
Over the four days on the lake I Noticed that we had much less luck setting
the hook on the larger size hooks and more fish come off, and as the size of
hook didn't seem to affect the number of strikes and size of fish we ended
up using #10-14's.
The fish were holding up close to shore the whole time seldom more than
thirty feet out. The Regulars said it had been like this for a couple of
weeks.
In my old age, I am only 56, but as I work with a crew that averages under
twenty five, I tend to feel much older, which an't all bad, I find I look
and watch much more. I also caught more fish than my two partners. I
started by watching the ducks on the lake figuring they'd be eating many of
the same things/places as the fish. I soon noticed dark lumps amongst the
birds, what were they? At fist I thought some part of a partially submerged
birds didn't seem to likely as the lumps often wouldn't move for several
minutes and last I looked them birds aint got no gills. So moved in closer
and saw that it was the dorsal fin of a very large fish. I continued to see
fish like this, large with dorsal fin exposed on the surface around the
lake, usually close to the shore, one fish was swimming in the trees that
grow up out of the lake along the SW shore. The fish seemed to be eating
terrestrials, dragon flies betas and most of all snails.
We, on the other hand, ate in town, as we never could develop a taste for
bugs and snails. Loved the burritos at the el Tapitino wagon, the pizza at
the pizza co ( very good) and the Maverick burger at the Maverick bar and
Grill is second only to the Ultimate soul burger you used to be able to get
at Eddy Cottons before he died. Oh and Don't let me forget to recommend the
Ice Cream parlor, had a fantastic huckleberry Ice Cream there.
So to sum it up good food, Good Fishing, good company, GOOD time. What
more could you ask for?
Fish On,
Jimmie E Girganoff
