Amber is looking like it is shaping up for a fine fall fishing season. After running errands on Sunday, I high tailed to the lake to catch the last hour of fishing. When I arrived, the water was calm but had only a few sporadic rises taking place. Midges were flying everywhere so I rigged up two rods. One for fishing deep and one to go on top. I trolled to the edge of the weeds on the southwest end of the lake without a bump and by this time the fish were starting to rise more consistently. I had about 45 minutes left to figure out what they were keying on so I switched over to a chironimid. After about 10 minutes, I had one slight bump but the fish wasn't there when I set the hook. Daylight was starting to go so I paused for a second to observe the fish to see if they were nailing the midges in the film as they were hatching or if they were going after the abundant number of adults on the surface. A fish came out of the water and nailed an adult as it was moving on!
the surface. I quickly changed to the only midge pattern I had with me which was a size 14 Renegade. It was a bit large but it was all I had. I cast it out several times and missed a bump. I then saw a fish rise 3 times in a straight line so tossed the fly 5 feet in front on him and slurp! A few minutes later I had a nice, healthy 18 inch fish to hand that was close to 2 pounds. In that last 15 minutes of light I landed two more fish (15 inch and 11 inch) and had one more missed strike. Two of the 3 fish hit the Renegade as it was moving and the big one hit it on the dead drift.

---