Once again we hit coldwater lake for a day of trophy trout fishing.....well as trophy as they get around these parts. Fishing was slow at best. We only managed one over 18in, that measured 22in. All of the other fish were right around 14in. We tried flies for about an hour about 5:30am.....no takes on skeeters, wooly buggers, gnats, all the usual patterns, and no takers.....so we switched to spoons and the fun started almost immediately. Silver/Orange krocadile was the ticket, jigged or trolled, it didn't seem to matter. What a great day......although not as great as it was the first weekend we were here in early May.....I think the fish were spawning at that time, because just about every other cast produced a fat 16in fish.....beautifully colored.

As for making this a strictly fly fishing only lake.....what's the point. It's already limited to no bait, single barbless hooks. That means NO TREBLES.....what's the harm of throwing a spinner? Does no more harm than hooking a fish with a fly. I think of myself as a 50/50 fly/HW fisherman, and it really erks me to see one group of fisherman bad mouthing another group, just because their tactics don't align......it's not the hw guys that are ruining this lake......it's the lack of management/patrol in my opinion. I witnessed on individual take a limit of 6 fish one day all under 16in.......I informed him of the limit and he acted like I was a blithering idiot, shouted some obscenity and drove off...I made my call to the proper people, but whether anything got done about it......I don't know. So let's not jump to conclusions as to why the fish aren't as big or plentiful this year, until we know the facts.....just because you ONLY toss flies at big swimmy, doesn't automatically make you the better fisherman/conservationist, it only means you are limiting your chances of hooking a fish on some days.

Editor's Note: OK, we've heard from both points of view on hardware vs. flies only for this lake. I will ask that any further discussion take place on the Forum and not in the body of the report. Thank you.

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