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.