This is this first report I have posted here, but it is a story I have to tell. My son (he is 15) and I are from Seattle and this past weekend we made what has become our annual early-season trip to fish central Washington. Three days of fishing in the heat and sun! I planned float-tubing for the middle day and as it was the first float tube experience for my son, I wanted to make sure it was memorable both for the scenery and the fish. So I chose Dusty Lake, southeast of Quincy. I had not been there in over 10 years, but it fished great back then and I recalled the beauty of the place, and the reports were still good, so off we went. No problem locating it, and we weren't rushing. I was planning to fish the lake deep, so I wasn't super concerned about the time. We got our gear out and setup for the hike in; Turns out we needed all the time we could get...what a couple of amateurs we were! First I didn't secure one of the valves on my kid's tube and it was half flat 100 yards down the trail...so back up to the car we hiked and re-inflated it. Then halfway to the lake and we realized we forgot to switch to the sinking line reels...so back up to the car I trudged...omg if you go, there DO NOT FORGET ANYTHING!!! Just about kicked my ass and I was without any gear. Then I couldn't find one of those reels so I grabbed a leader wallet from my 8wt that had a bunch of sinking tips and hiked backed down again. By the time we got our dumb asses into the water it was 11:30.

Having fished the lake before I knew a little about the depth and structure of the lake, so we started at the right hand cliff trolling about 20-80 ft from the shore. We were both using leech patterns, one with bead, one variegated. I attached both a mid-rate and a fast-rate sinking tip on the end of my floating line to get my fly down deep...wasn't pretty but it worked. Within 10 minutes my son hooked into something. He was using his Blue Halo 5wt glass rod (more of a noodle, if you ask me) and was suddenly into a fight. It took almost 2 minutes for him to bring it up and net it, and that was a gorgeous 16" fish! He said it was really strong, but I thought it must be his rod. We kept trolling around the first bay, and within 15 minutes I got into one of my own. Yeah. Strong fish! We kept going around the central point and down the eastern bank to the north, fishing 30-40' deep and we picked up 7 more fish along that side in just under an hour. We picked up a few more over the next hour or so with a total for the day of 15 fish landed in 3 hours (we lost another dozen). They ranged from 14" to almost 20", tough strong fighters every one. We were really impressed by the fight in them for their size...not 20"+ but sure fun to catch. On more than one occasion they were strong enough to pull us around a bit in our tubes! We ran out of water and had to stop, but I think we could have kept up that rate for most of the day, if not for the better in the evening.

WARNING! The hike out is not easy, especially toting a tube pack and gear. Make sure you have good footwear to make it back out. We used our river wading boots, and that was fine. If you make the hike, the fishing and the scenery are totally worth it!

Tight lines!

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