Well it took till May 20 to finally get a nice day this year. The temperature was 74º under clear skies with a 5-10 mph breeze from the north. The surface temperature of the water ranged from 60-63º and the bottom temperature in the middle of the lake at 50' was 50º. A very slight thermocline was developing at about 22'. There was a little algae floating on the surface in certain areas of the lake, but mostly the water was clear.
I started fishing about 1:30 pm and proceeded to go up the east side of the lake to the bubbler. I marked a few fish on the finder at about 15' and all the way to the bottom at 30'. Using a full sink line, I trolled up and down the east side a few times with only one or two bumps. I crossed over to the west side and trolled the area by the running path. There were no fish marked at all over there and headed back over to the east side. About 6:00 pm, I noticed that the swallows were starting to fly low to the water and figured a hatch was coming off. I swithched over to my floating line and moved out into the middle of the lake heading south. I had a red bead head olive Carey on for just a few minutes when I got a very violent hit. Suddenly a nice rainbow jumped out the water, not once, but 4 times. He kept on jumping and swimming in my direction and I had a hard time keeping the slack out of my line. After making a couple of good runs taking line out, he finally gave me break and I was able to land him. Knowing that he was exhausted, I kept him in the net, got a quick measurement (19") and got a weight of 2.5 lbs. He was pretty worn out, but with a little aquatic CPR and coaxing, he recovered and swam down into the depths.
Shortly after that I headed down to the south end aerator. I changed to a Ptarmigan Hare's Ear and caught another fish almost exactly the same size as the first, (2lbs., 9oz) which jumped,unbelievably, 7 times. When I released him he swam away like he wasn't even tired.
Both fish were little footballs, with very good color. I had my camera with me, but after their long fights and runs, I thought it best to keep them in the net and release them as soon as possible.
With few fish showing up on the fish finder all afternoon long, they must be scattered. I think that once the surface temperature climbs into the low 70's, the fish should be consistantly in the 20-25' range. Could have been a better afternoon, but the evening action made up for the slow fishing. It felt so good to sit under a clear sky and soak up some sun!

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