I fished Amber lake for the first time all year. When I arrived on the water at 4pm, I immediately hit three fish suspended 12-15 ft down in 25 ft of water in front of the boat launch. I only water to "bobber fish" today, so I left my full sink and intermediate fly lines at home to resist the temptation to change lines/tactics. A small olive/chartreuse leech took a nice cutthroat and a bionic worm took the other two fish (both rainbows). I broke a cardinal rule of mine (never leave fish to find fish) after hooking three fish in my first four casts of the evening by leaving that area to do some "exploring" and see if I could not find active fish in the shallower depth areas of the lake on the south end. I knew that fish would still be holding deep given the water temps, but did not feel like fishing a 20-25' ft leader to get at them (my guess is fishing chironomids vertically off a full sink line would have worked well today- that and "dredging" with a full sink line- a couple older guys were doing well slowly working the bottom at 25-27 ft with sinking line presentations). My decision to leave fish to find fish never really paid off. I went without a hit fishing water 15ft or less in depth, and in hindsight I probably should have focused my efforts on targeting fish from top to bottom in water 20-25 ft in depth, but I was "experimenting" a bit so to speak. Leeches, blood worms, stillwater nymphs all failed to produce when fished in the bottom 12-24 inches of the water column in 10-15 ft of water. When I returned back to the area in front of the launch and began fishing the deeper water again toward the end of the evening, trout began taking what I surmise to be midges just below the surface. I switched to a shallow nymphing setup with my indicator about a foot above my first fly and 18'-24' above the second (both chiro patterns). Having had good luck in the past fishing serendipties when the trout were taking midges just below the surface, I tied on a size 16 grey serendiptity and immediately took a nice rainbow, the first fish since I arrived on the lake a few hours earlier. The rises became more steady and consistent in this area of the lake, and I hit another nice rainbow about 10 min later on the grey serendipity. They were willing to take it, but not as consistenly as I thought they should be given the way the trout were feeding all around me. Something was not right with the pattern- as luck would have it in the fading daylight, an adult midge buzzed by me and literally landed on my arm, giving me not an exact sense of the color/size of the emerging pupae, but enough to cause me to go smaller with my pattern and change color (the adult was cream/pale yellow) so I switched to a size 18 pale yellow serendipity that I will fish at times for trout feeding on emerging pmd's. First cast, the trout took it with total confidence (the kind of take that tells you it took the pattern for the real thing). One trout is not enough to tell you if the pattern is going to keep you in the game during a hatch, but four trout in five cast later I surmised the decision to switch was a good one. Only problem was the light was now gone, bats were flying everywhere and trout were still feeding. It would have been nice to have a longer period of light to fish this hatch, but not being set up for night time conditions, I decided to call it a day. Not a bad first time out on Amber for the year.

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