It's been a long and excellent 2014 fall Trout season! from 9/29/14 till 12/27/14 I got out targeting Trout 15 times. Out of those 15 trips I got 71 Rainbows into the boat. This is an average of almost 5 fish a trip. I had several skunks which is unusual for me but I also had 5 trips where I caught 8 or more fish during a single trip. During my best trip I ended up catching 12 Trout. The vast majority of the fish I caught this year were this years stockers between 14 and 18 inches in length. I caught no Brown Trout this fall which is extremely unusual. Last year I caught 12 Browns. Their absence is a mystery. I'm sure they are still in there and will show up when I least expect it.
12/27 Trip:
Mike and I got to our favorite Trout lake in the early afternoon. The wind was blowing from the Southwest at a pretty good clip. We stuck to the South shore to avoid some of the rather large waves that were present on the North shore of the lake. I caught a few fish here and there to start the day but really got into them during the last hour of light. At one point I had a fish take my right side rod. I got that fish in, released it, and began to paddle back out into the lake with my other line still in the water. Before I even made it back to deep water, I had a fish on the other line! I got that fish in and released it. I set my lines again and had barely started to paddle when I hooked and landed a third fish. All three fish came within a matter of minutes! I got the good fortune to see not one but two adult Bald Eagles while on the water. They are so neat to see and really add to a trip. The wind was starting to shift and was coming straight out of the West and starting to increase in speed even more. I was now paddling directly into the wind. I had a fish hit the lure on the right side of my boat without getting hooked. I then had a fish hit the lure on the left side of my boat without getting hooked. I finally hooked up on the third strike on the right rod. As I was fighting that fish my kayak was drifting at a pretty good pace due to the wind. I almost had the fish in when I realized that a fish had taken my second lure and I had a double, my first of the year! I got the first fish in the net and wedged the net between my boat and my leg. This kept the fish already in the net in the water while I fought the second fish. I grabbed the second rod out of the holder. The fish had plenty of slack line so I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been gone by the time I got to it. I reeled up the slack line only to see that as I was reeling my rod was getting that familiar bow to it! The fish was still on and after a short battle I had two beautiful and nearly identical trout in the net at the same time! The two could have practically been twins. I released those fish and reset my lines. I was paddling into the wind again when I got a jolting strike from a fish. It stripped line about 5 times before I even had time to recover and before I knew it, it had me into the backing on my fly rod. I was hoping this was going to be as good fish by the way it was fighting and it did not disappoint! It was a massive Rainbow that looked more like a small Steelhead than the stocker Rainbows I had been catching all season. After several more runs and some thrashing around the likely last and certainly nicest fish of 2014 was in the net. The photos from my carmera did not turn out too well unfortunately. The pictures below are stills from my GoPro camera and are not extremely high quality. The fish was a beautiful female with her spawning colors. I did not measure the fish as I wanted to get it back into the water as soon as possible but I would estimate it's length at well over 20 inches. What a great way to end a great trip! I ended up catching 9 fish out of 12 strikes. All of the fish were caught in shallow water with Clouser Minnow flies. I had to paddle out against 2 foot waves with white caps and it took me a full 30 minutes to get back to where I had parked. What a great 2014. I'm looking forward to an amazing 2015!
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| These two fish were my first double of the year and were practically twins! |
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| GoPro shots of my nicest fish of the year. |
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| Couldn't have asked for a better fish to catch as my last of 2014! |
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