Thanks to Clayton Wright for visiting Lone Lake Saturday and saying, Hi, for our club. Here is the report that was circulated after their outing.
Greetings Fishers,
Yesterday morning we were greeted by surprisingly pleasant weather as we pulled into the Lone Lake Parking lot about 8:30. A gentle 5 mph breeze was blowing into shore from the southwest. Not bad considering the howling wind and rain the night before. Jim Black set up the pop-up canopy and table as Tom Langley put out the donuts and coffee. By 9:30 we had a big crowd. I did not count all the people but there were close to 25 of us, including friends from the Olympic Peninsula, Evergreen and Whidbey Island fly fishing clubs.
To get things started Tom Langley gave an excellent briefing on how and where to fish in the lake. With that we geared up and the armada hit the lake. By about 1:00 most were back on shore warming up and sharing info. As expected the fishing was very slow. Most fishers used full sink lines and worked leech and woolly bugger patterns deep and slow. There were lots of little hits and a several fish landed. My daughter Emily, who is new to the sport, and I rowed to the far side of the lake where it was a bit more protected from the wind. We anchored up side by side and I helped her set up for her first experience with indicator fishing. She fished a bloodworm pattern and I dangled an olive micro leech. After a few minutes Emily’s indicator went down and she missed the set as she tried to figure out this new technique. Just then mine went down and we landed our first fish. All of a sudden things took off and over the next hour we landed 7 fish and missed a few more. It was a great Father, Daughter experience and reminded me how important it is to pass on my enthusiasm for the sport to others. But nature called and we needed to head back just as the bite was really on. We thought about going back out but that was about the time the wind picked up a bit more and it started to shower. So we did the only rational thing, we packed up and headed to the Tap Room at Bayview where we met up with about a dozen colleagues who had the same idea!
It was a late winter fishing day, cold and slow, but Lone Lake is just about ready to really turn on. I noticed midges hatching most of the day. And I did hear that a fisher from the Whidbey club was having success fishing chironomids.
A special thanks to Tom Langley and Jim Black for their help with the hosting. And thanks to all our members and friends for turning out big for the first outing of the year! We have a great club.
Greg Sisson