First Day on the Cascades for 2010

I decided to blow the dust off of the old tired pontoon boat last sunday and head for one of my all time favorite fly fishing destinations. Little Lava Lake. LL is a often overlooked smaller lake on the cascade lakes hwy. I have often times on this lake, especially around this time of year had some of my best ever trout fishing days here.
Upon arrival the weather was pretty nice, partly to mostly cloudy skies probably in the high 40's low 50's. There was also not another soul to be seen on the lake. Perfect. I launched the toon and headed for my favorite area of the lake, fully expecting to light it up fish count wise......2hrs later and not one strike my confidence is taking a nose dive and i'm literally scratching my head trying to figure out what is going wrong here.....The only conclusion is that the water temps aren't quite warm enough yet for the trout to be in the shallower water hammering chironomids/midges like they usually are this time of year.
A switch of tactics had me moving to a deeper,rockier area of the lake looking for some brookies that will surely be biting....maybe.......
A storm rolls in and all of a sudden its snowing sideways, temps dropped 15 degrees and the wind is rolling....crap....well i slowly start making my way towards the boat ramp working a new bugger type pattern, a winter invention of mine right on the bottom.....then finally, FINALLY, i feel a tug....i set the hook and FISH ON. It didn't feel like much of a fish, small brookie was my guess...that is until i got it in close, then i saw it. And it saw me and took off like a locomotive.....holy crap......make that BIG brookie.....A couple minutes later i had in my hands probably the biggest brookie i've caught in 4 yrs....i quick measurement against the writing on the fly rod later revealed a legitimate 17" fat brook trout. A rare sized brook trout for this area....

A Good Day