Tubing With Willi And The Shoe

Shoe and Willi headed up to the high plains to partake of some of the fall action on the local lakes around town. We had a quality day with consistent action and some decent weather. A little wind did come up in the afternoon but nothing terrible and certainly not at the forecasted levels. I fished the indicator rig all day with good action at the first lake and nothing to show for it after moving. Shoe and Willi had action on leeches and seemed to pick up the pace later in the day. Another quality fall day to be afield before the caps go on and ice fishing begins.

Calm tubing weather in the morning


My best rainbow of the day took a midge


Shoe out in the choppy afternoon waters


Horses grazing at our second stop


Willi and Shoe satisfied at the end of the day

Another Ice Out Evening

The afternoon started on a plains lake I had not put any time in on since the spring and I had been hearing good reports of nice cutthroats. It is a pretty lake and I went out to try my hand for the football shaped trout that were making people talk about it.


I tried the bugger and drifted nymphs to no avail. A few fish splashed the surface, but not nearly enough to get me to switch it up for dries. I decided to move and take another shot at my destination from the day before, in the hopes that the ice may have receded enough to provide some open water. Sure enough the lake had opened about halfway and I managed a few casts before dark.

Nearing the end of the evening, I had cast out and let the nymph rig settle. Putting two twitches on the line to lift and twitch the nymphs was all it took to ignite a response from a trout. He hammered the rig and started running. This didn't seem to be the normal rainbow typical to this lake, but something much stronger and aggressive. Sure enough, when I managed to land the fish, it was a stout brook trout. I hadn't ever caught one in here before although a few years ago they had stocked it with brookies. This one much have been a holdover and was quite a nice way to find them still thriving in the lake.

Sunset finally fell behind the mountains and it was time to call it an evening. I drove home thinking about that brook trout the entire time and how I had been lucky enough to tangle with him.

Typical Wyoming Weather

Having taken Friday off work to fish, I was planning on a nice leisurely day of floating the plains lakes and catching some nice fall rainbows, on the feed to fatten up before winter. I neglected to check the wind ratings for Friday and was informed of them from my friend Shoe, as he sent me an email on Thursday night citing the wind as the reason I wouldn't be seeing him on Friday. It was probably a good decision on his part. I, however, persevered and headed out into the 50 mph gusts that typified the majority of my day off. Floating was entirely out of the question so I opted to check a lake I could fish off the dam with the wind at my back. This proved fruitless as it was still ICED from the storm last week.

I sincerely thought it would be open water fishing. It was a surprising development and it sent me home to collect my waders and boots and head to another lake I had reports on being actually open. It was whitecapping and blowing like crazy but I got around the back side of it and with the wind at my back I worked the shallow weed beds looking for rainbows. One nice rainbow fell for the PT but that was about it on the indicator rig.

After this, I watched some muskrats briefly while checking out their dens. They had 6 or 7 of these built in the inlet shallows.

Switching over to a brown bugger provided a vicious take on the first cast, right on splash down, but the trout was able to throw the fly and leave me wondering. After that I casted in vain for a while longer finally deciding to pick up some trash to leave the lake a little better than I found it, and departed satisfied that I had made a go of it in the rough and unfortunately typical Wyoming wind.

Big Lakes For Open Water

With every smaller lake up here on the plains iced up from the storm, I headed down to meet up with Mark and Jake to work some big water that was still wide open after the cold front.

Mark had picked up a couple of nice browns before I arrived, but after that it was a long and fruitless day on the big water. I had one brown on a streamer briefly and Mark was having equal trouble finding any fish with the indicator rig. Mark sent along this great picture of me relaxing and enjoying an Old Chub Scottish Ale with my friend Jake.

We opted for a lake move which immediately paid dividends in the form of 14 to 16 inch rainbows and cuttbows.

The last part of the day was action filled with an enjoyable amount of takes and fish to hand.

I got to meet Tangler and his crew briefly in the morning and that was nice to finally catch him out on the water and chat. They had put in an early morning before sunrise and were handsomely rewarded. He should have a blog up about it soon as I got to see some of the great photos they had from the start of the day.

Post Storm Thaw

Well not quite everything has thawed out. The lake I went out to in the afternoon was still completely solid.



I sort of expected the ice but had to get some eyes on it anyway to be sure of what was happening. This is the last night before turning back the clock and darkness will start early in the evening. Moving water was the only chance I would have at some trout so I ventured on to some open water. Unfortunately it was soupy and off color from all the quick melting snow. I had one solid tug on a leech and scared a few fish at my feet off the bank when I would get right on top of them. There was no way to sight fish to the trout and they couldn't see me either in the muddy water. At least the storm is over and I can again head for the outdoors and open waters.