My Hands are Numb. My face Hurts.

I've been busy recently and this was my first real fishing trip in 3 weeks (Sorry, but Boulder Creek and unsuccessful carping just don't scratch that itch). The last time I went three... heck, two weeks without fishing was probably some time in January.

The air was crisp in the morning, and there was a tolerable but stern wind. It was very nice hiking weather. We navigated woods with a few glances of the map here and there.


After breaking above treeline we hurried through the final miles up to the objective. The stern wind had meanwhile turned into an abusive, drunk uncle who stubbed his toe - wind. The lake was angry that day my friends; like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli.

Chuck and I had to throw on the wind breaker jackets and the pants. My brother is yet to invest in wind breaker pants and therefore paid the price in experience. He was reduced to curling up under a bush and behind some boulders for a while.

He snapped a photo pretty cool photo during the savage wind assault. Note my fly line defying gravity.


The little bit of my hands that were actually exposed were just within that threshold of numbness so that I could feel all the pain. I would turn my back to the wind and put my hands in fleece lined pockets to try to warm them up while the sound of the wind racing over my hood whistled like a cracked car window on the freeway. The gusts were having gusts. A couple times I let obscenities flow freely into the blameless wind, and cursed the almighty fish gods themselves! HAHA! Giving into the madness actually made things feel a little better, and all of a sudden I recalled that I had just busted my ass up a mountain to catch cutts, by God, and there was business at hand.

Glimpses of cruising beef under the wind broken, Picasso'ed surface boosted moral even more.

The indicator dips behind a wave, the set is solid, and a wriggling reflection of light starts lifting and flipping into view.





For a spawned out fish, she didn't look half bad. It took a neon orange size 20 egg.

Jason and I had additional hookups with bad sets that came unbuttoned shortly following that fish, and then the wind died down and the fish mellowed out. We put in hours with nothing to show for it. We would mark fish cruising occasionally, but they were all still very much distracted with spawning behaviors.

Later in the day the wind calmed significantly back to the stern breeze giving the surface a more rhythmic break... and another cutt was fooled. This time on a size 18 olive scud.



Yet later in the day, the wind totally died, and we got the aquarium view into the lake.



My bro caught a fish during this calm period (at pone point I was sweating in shorts and a tee shirt) effectively sneaking past the slumbering skunk.


Jason, however, was not spared... this was the last known photo of him before the skunk was consummated, LOL!


...I'm getting scared of the karma that he's building up when fishing in my presence. One of these days he's gonna catch some trophy fish while I simultaneously step off a cliff.