by The Troutist, September 26, 2011

As I mentioned at the end of my last column I was telling you about a new swivel that is on the market that I am so impressed with I had to let you know about it. This new swivel is called the invisiswivel and is made out of a fluorocarbon material that makes this swivel invisible in water. I love this new space age stuff that is filtering down to us commoners. In over 40 years of angling I have never found a swivel that works as well as this one. It is self-lubricating and does not stop working, it is always on the job. It is non-corrosive and comes in different test strength. You can find these swivels in stock at Cabela’s in Lacey or go on-line to aquateko.com for the low down.

I have found that working with anything that you might troll that there is, at times different circumstances that might cause your spinner, fly or what ever to spin and twist your leader up. This means re-rigging and time spent not chasing the fish. The set-up I use for the Smile Blade Fy is that I run 6 foot of leader from my loop, tie on the invisiswivel, then add about 4 more feet of leader attach that to my swivel and then tie my fly to the other end of the leader. With this set-up I have not had to re-tie my leader for several outings. Okay now back to my fishing log on my experience with Mack’s new Smile Blade Fly. The next three trips were to brothers favorite Mason County lakes.
June 10th-My guest angler is my brother Brett whom I consider an expert in “Blue Collar Fly Fishing”. Lost Lake is our testing ground, surface water temperature is holding steady at 64 degrees. Partrly sunny and very windy. We worked the lake from 5pm until 7pm. The wind was blowing so hard that we were confined to the south end of the lake, seems that is the only place we could escape such windy conditions. We proceeded to hook and release 7 and kept 1. The olive and green Smile Blade Fly was the answer. Average size seemed to run from 11 to 14-inches. Very enjoyable two-hour adventure.

June 11th-Island Lake was out next target. Seems in our hurry I left my electronics at home and had to work the lake the old fashion way. But on the bright side we remembered our roids, reels, fly boxes and our lunches. It was a fairly nice day on the water with an occasional light breezer and sunny skies. I was shocked to say the least. We worked the lake from 8am until 2:30pm, basically until the afternoon winds picked up. Olive and green managed one hook-up but the star today was the bronze and brown. After only seeing a couple caught by other anglers we were quite pleased to bring home four ranging in size from 13-16 1/2-inches. Once again there was no doubt when you had a hook-up, the trout just slammed these flies.

June 12th-Nahwatzel Lake was our destination and one of Brett’s all time favorite Mason County lakes. We hit the water at 8am and worked it until 1:30pm. Surface water temperature was holding steady at 64-degrees. The lake was foiggy when we arrived but as the day wore on it burned off. It became quite breezy at times making for some manuverability problems with the boat, but we managed on occasion to work the water the way we wanted to. All the time on the water we were seeing very little action by other anglers. We did see two small ones landed by hardware trollers, nothing of any size though. We seen a lot of long faces as folks headed back to the ramp empty handed.

We thoroughly covered our established areas on the lake and even had to venture out and work the whole lake. It was a tough day but I knew if we kept at it we would find the right color combination. Brett hooked up with a small 11-incher on a purple and black color combination and quickly released it. I then tied on an olive and green and quickly landed a plump 14-inch bow. A short time after that I hooked up with the one I had been looking for all day, a nice 3lb 11oz bow.
We worked the water a bit longer and Brett switched over to green and black. Seemed like just a few minutes after that the wind picked up and we were going to call it a day. All of a sudden Brett’s rod doubled over and it was fish-on time. After a give and take battle Brett brought him to the net. I weighed him on my electronic scales, a very respectable 4lb 2oz bow. Although we only had three trout in the cooler, they were nice sized and no one else was doing anything out there. Needless to say we were quite pleased with ourselves. The Smile Blade Fly pulled through once again. Brett was so impressed with how hard the trout hit these flies that a few of them found their way into his fly box.

June 18th-Thurston Counties Clear Lake was my destination. The sky was overcast all day with wind at times. The surface water temperature was holding steady at 65-degrees. My guest angler was Sgt. David Morris a participant of the Project Healing Waters program. This trip had been on the board for quite some time and I was looking forward to angling with our wounded vets. We worked the water from 10:30am until 5pm.
Sgt. Morris is a beginner when it comes to “Blue Collar Fly Fishing”, but he was a quick learner and proved to have a very productive day. When he got into my boat I told him that we were going to out fish everyone on the water, he looked skeptical. We both started out with different color combinations, Morris with pearl and black and me with olive and green. Green seemed to be working so I switched him over to black and green. Black and green was the winning combination of the day as out fished me, hooking and releasing twelve to seven. Sgt. Morris was extremely impressed at how hard the trout smacked these flies. Seems Sgt. Morris had the bragging rights for the day, as he was the only soldier to catch fish. His big grin at the boat launch was a dead giveaway. Stay tuned for part three of this series as I work with a little different set-up. So until next time may your next trout be your trophy mount.

The Troutist-“Uncle Wes”

Column courtesy of Outdoors Northwest