I made my yearly June trip up to Brown's hoping to have a very productive day like years past. This trip was not the same. I got on the water about 1:00 p.m. and started casting a Renegade on the surface. The air temperature was in the low '70's, clear skies and a variable westerly wind, 5-15 mph. The water temperature on the surface was 59º and the water was very clear. The hatches, both mayfly and midge, were very light.
Seeing no rises in the middle of the lake, I decided to try fishing the shadows on the south side of the lake. On my trek down the shoreline, I saw one large rise in the shadows. It was between two fallen trees, one over the other, going into the water. A perfect cover for a feeding trout. I hooked and netted him, 15", and sent him on his way again.
That was the only large trout I saw rise all afternoon. There were a couple of very small dink frys that hit the surface and that was it.
I put on a Stayner's Duck and trolled deep, picking up two more, one 15" and one about 10".
The puzzling thing about today was that the weather, water conditions and temperatures were almost the same as from years past. The only thing different this year is that there was a lot of rain in the past 2 weeks. Someone told me that the lake had risen about 12 inches in the last two weeks. It was up to near the high water mark on the shoreline. One thing remains unexplained. I covered the entire lake in the afternoon and did not mark one fish on the fish finder and saw about 5 fish rise to the surface. The only thing that I can think of that would explain such a very slow day is that we have had a very wet, cold, long spring. Perhaps the hatches are lagging behind from years past.
Today was the slowest day that I have experienced in 35+ years of fishing Brown's Lake.

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