I fished a lake up by Quesnel two weekends ago. I debated whether to mention this trip as it's within Charlie's infamous "Nunya" chain. Anyways, most lakes up there should fish about the same, so the name doesn't matter much. This lake had lots of willing kamloops in it ranging from 16-20 inches. I started out thinking I could do fairly well fishing chironimids under indicators, or damsel and dragon imitations. Turned out I didn't get much action on these flies and I got to listen to the hoots and hollers of my friends as they constantly hooked up. That day I did land about 10 fish and had one fish about 5 lbs grab one of my chironimids take off running and keep on going. I never even caused this fish to hesitate. The next day I switched to wooly buggers like my friends used. I tried a lime green one and in the stained water of this lake, it really seemed to be the right ticket. I couldn't keep the fish off and had about a 40 fish day from my float tube. I did get to experiment on short striking fish as every so often I would get a "tap..tap..tap..tap" on my fly and not be able to hook up. I started throwing about a foot of slack when that would happen and everytime after that when I'd pull the line up tight, the fish was there. I had an idea that the fish were smacking the fly like they would a leech trying to get it to ball up so they could swallow it. That was my idea and it seemed to work. The next day I went to an even larger all black wooly bugger, a #6 4xl. I would have used a #4 but my box of real big ones was back at the cabin we were staying in. Bottom line on the bigger black one was I hooked the larger trout. Seemed like every one was measuring 18 inches and up.... mostly up. So, that's my "Nunya" lake story and I'm sticking to it. Bill Warner
