Fished Beda Lake again yesterday with a friend (yep, it's open year 'round.) Weather.com said to expect partly cloudy conditions with highs in the mid 50s. Buy, did they ever get that wrong. Had the wipers on most of the drive over and we wadered up in a squall.
The good news was there was nobody else there (although there were plenty of duck hunter rigs in the next parking lot north and lots of shotgun reports) so we had the lake to ourselves for a pleasant change from the last trip. Water temp was still at 47 degrees and there was NO wind. We both started out with intermediates. I took a cookie-cutter 17 inch triploid right off on a tan GRHE. For the next couple hours, we watched swirling fish, all with a bad case of lockjaw. We tried just about everything we could think of, including bloodworms and chironomids under an indicator along the east side, all with no success. I finally switched to a BH lightning bug fished off the floater with slow twitches and picked up a second fish after three cold, wet hours. We climbed out and brewed some soup and hot chocolate on the bank (I brought my little MSR stove along) but our feet were still cold and the rain was coming down steadily. We decided to troll back across the lake and call it a day. As I was following my partner up to the pull out, I noticed a large swirl close to the reeds along the north side, maybe 15 yards away. My friend also saw it from the bank and urged me to try one last quick cast (both of us figuring separately that I'd have no more chance at success than we'd had the previous 3 hours ;-) My first cast was short of where the fish had showed but the second one was right on. I had just started to strip when the fish hit. It towed my pontoon boat around the little boat launch bay for what seemed like 10 minutes, pulling line out at will. I finally released the fish of the day, a measured 20 inch hog that put a grin on my face for the drive home. Kent Lufkin
