I fished Bayley from 6 am -1pm today and was the only person on the lake for the entire time. The surface water temps were warm to the touch, and its not a lake I would hit again until the water cools this fall, but the fish were very aggressive and active, many of them going airborne and jumping multiple times after I hooked them. The first two hours (6-8am) were "silly", the kind of fishing where you really do not have to work at all to catch fish. My experience on this lake is that during low light periods (i.e. early mornings) the fish feed a lot on chironomid larvae (anywhere from a size 6-18) and scuds, both of which are typically active in the substrate of the lake bottom. This is especially true when no chironomid pupae are ascending to the surface to hatch, which was the case today even though this lake can get some amazing chironomid hatches which produce some amazing fishing opportunities when you hit it right. That being said, there was little chironomid activity that was observable, with the most prevalent insects on the water being adult damsels, which the fish were not interested in judging from the absence of "torpedo" rises. Never saw a damsel nymph swimming near the surface, so I concentrated my efforts in the bottom foot or two of the water column, only varying the depth of the water I was fishing in. There is some deeper water in Bayley, but the most productive depth for me today was between 11-15 feet deep, though I caught some fish in water that was 6-8ft in depth. Fishing the bottom two feet of the water column was key today, as was "location". Fish seemed "podded" up today - I could fish one area without success but move to a different location without changing anything in respect to presentation, pattern, water depth, etc. and the strikes would come in rapid succession. In close to seven hours of fishing, I took on average 3-4 fish an hour, although in the first two hours of the morning I must have hooked close to 20 fish, landing 10-12 of them. The wind was minimal for a large part of the morning, creating little surface disruption, and the fish seemed to want the fly "dead still", nearly motionless. All fish in the morning hours took a size 12 bloodworm (orange bead head- red marabou tail), though I was indicator fishing with a tandem rig using various other nymph/pupae patterns. Around nine or so the fishing started to really slow down, and in hind sight I wished I had made the pattern switch sooner than I did, but I noticed in the morning hours from the throat samples I took, the only consistent and abundant food source those trout took were small dark olive scuds (with red chironomid larvae being a distant second. These scuds were about an 18 in size, but I never went to them in the morning because the bloodworm pattern was "slaying" them. Adult damsels started showing up in increasing numbers on the lake from about 9:30 am on, and suspecting some nymphs would be moving as well, I tried fishing various damsel nymph imitations near the bottom to little success. I switched back to the bloodworm for awhile and got the random, opportunistic trout, but between 9:30-11:00am I hit a lull. Not fishing scuds alot, I remembered my morning findings and tied on a small dark olive scud imitation and worked back through the water I fished successfully in the morning and the fish started responding like "gangbusters" again. For about an hour, I was getting strikes on almost every cast. Things shut down once a huge wind came in around 1pm and never slowed down, so I left rather than try to battle it. Overall, it was a good day on Bayley. The fish were healthy and strong, though not as big as in the past. Largest fish was about 21 inches, with most being between 13-16.

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