So my wife and I had headed over to Chelan for a long vacation weekend with a decent amount of fishing thrown in. Our primary targets were the Lahontan Cutthroat of Omak Lake, however, I had done some reading up on Antilon lake and we decided to give it a shot the evening that we got into town as a precursor to the next day's cutthroat fishing. Neither of us had caught a Brown Trout either and Antilon therefore seemed to be a perfect little diversion.

We arrived at the lower lake, which was more of an "off road" experience than I had anticipated, got the raft ready to go and were fishing by about 6:00pm. Note that my off road comment also comes from the perspective of someone driving a front wheel drive sedan with standard ground clearance.

I started my wife out with an 1/8oz gold and crimson Kastmaster, while I began working a hand tied size 10 olive Woolly Bugger. As of that evening, I had not yet caught a Brown Trout, nor had I caught a fish on an actual fly rod, nor had I caught a fish on one of my own hand tied flies. I thought I stood a really good chance of making it a "three-for" of firsts that night with a single fish, but only ended up shooting myself in the foot.

My olive WB got no love, so I switched it to a hand tied chum baby which I figured would probably work on a fish eating brown. Low and behold I managed to hook a fish casting right close to shore and stripping the fly back at a snail's pace. The fish rocketed to the surface, shook around a bit and then threw the hook. It was just enough to give me hope that I would get a fish on the fly that night, but it wasn't meant to be. I eventually switched to another hand tied white WB, but didn't get another touch all night.

Meanwhile, I cycled my wife through the aforementioned Kastmaster, a size 4 black/yellow/gold Panther Martin and a 1/6oz silver and yellow Rooster Tail. None of them received any definitive hits, and so I decided it was time to go bright. I switched her to a size 2 pink and silver Vibrax and we finally got some luck. Working just off the point between the two "bays" at the north end of the lake she got a great hit by a healthy Brown of about 14" which we then released. Shortly after she got another good hit, but that ended up being all of our action for that night. I eventually gave up on the fly rod and switched to lures, cycling through various lures before finally trying a worm under a bobber in the dying light, all with no luck.

My observations about the lake when we were there were that the fish are hanging out close to shore, probably not more than 20' out. They also seem to key in on bright lures, which surprised me a first but doesn't now that I think about it. In the evening the lake is almost fully in shadow by the mountain to the west of it, so it makes sense that your standard metallic lures don't work as well, but brightly painted ones do. Also, letting the lures sink down deep was definitely important. Even though there were a decent number of fish rising, I believe our only hits came on deeper presentations.

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