Two Fister
10-17-2005, 12:54 PM
Hey Fly Guys,
This started out as a simple report and ended up more of a story about a day with my oldest son. The short version is that we had a great day of Callibaetis fishing at Lava. The long version follows!
As Momma and our youngest were up in PDX for the weekend, I took our big guy (just turned 5) up to Lava Lake for a day on the water. I usually don't call it fishing when we head out as he mostly likes to do a lot of boat driving, snacking, and napping, with the odd light saber battle or kung fu fight thrown in for good measure. He likes to fish at Lava so that he can bring a fish home for Mommas supper as the fish at East Lake have been labeled as "Stinky" because of the mercury concerns.
A while back I bought him a beautifully illustrated book about fishing called "A Good Day's Fishing" by James Prosek. In it the author calls a Rainbow Rapala his lucky lure. My son had that same lure in his tackle box so it's his defacto go to lure. He hasn't gotten a strike on it yet, but when you're 5 that's a minor inconvenience. If it's lucky in the book, it's got to be the one. I usually fall victim to the same logic on a larger scale so I guess it's hereditary...
So after spending a couple of hours dragging the Rapala around the lake without a bump and about 5,000 sugar laced calories, he decided it was nap time. Good thing too as he was bouncing around like a jumping bean from too many of the cookies and chocolate milk I had packed as extra incentive to make a full day out of it.
It was about 1:00, so I thought there might be some callibaetis coming off along the weed beds on the western side of the lake. The lake was dead still and I motored over to the northwest corner to see if anything was happening. I killed the motor and drifted in about 6 feet of water maybe 30 feet from the reeds. Before I could grab my flyrod I saw at least 10 rise forms on both sides of us. It didn't take too long to see that there were callibaetis emergers, duns, and spinners in the water all around us. I rigged a parachute cripple with a timberline emerger trailing about 20" behind it and cast it out into the midst of the action. The fly barely touched the water and it was inhaled. I struck way, way, way too hard and got back a pile of tangled leader. I clipped it all away and retied as the tangled knot of line and leader was a beauty. In the meantime, the fish continued to rise all around us. I got things tied back on and got my flies back into the ring. I again immediately hooked another fish and Danny woke up in time to see me bringing a nice fat 15" fish along side of the boat. He scrambled around to find the net and he helped me net and release the fish. I put Danny up on the fish box and I stayed on the deck so that he could help me cast. I think we got about 15 feet of line out without too many tangles. After watching the cripple for a couple of minutes there was a big rise just behind it and we were tight to a nice fish that jumped several times. This one was pushing 19" and was built like a football. He really wanted to take it home for Momma, but I persuaded him to wait for a smaller one (read stocker) as that one was too big for Momma to eat. He agreed reluctantly.
Over the course of the next half of an hour we caught and released about 5 more fish in the 14"-18" range. There were some real bruisers rising closer to shore, but I was having way too much fun casting with him to take the rod away so that I could get more line out. There were fish rising within a couple of feet of the boat and there were rise forms as far as you could see. Everybody else was fishing near the resort so there wasn't another boat on our end of the lake. It was one of those days that I'll remember always.
I was thinking that we had about an hour or two of red hot fishing left when he tugged on my sleeve and told me that it was time to head for the outhouse on the other end of the lake. It's one thing for a 5 year old take care of #1 off of the offshore bracket, but this was a definite outhouse call. I looked around and realized that I had taken the small bucket I carry for this type of emergency out of the boat the last time I cleaned it out. So I reeled in, pulled the anchor and we cruised across the lake at the posted 10 MPH speed limit to the dock. Danny sat on my lap and helped me steer the boat. We talked about nothing and everything. It was one of those moments that I'll try hard to remember when he's a teenager...
When we got back to the boat, I could tell the temperature had dropped a bit and the wind direction/speed had changed pretty dramatically. Either will put a callibaetis hatch down. We ran back across the lake just to make sure. The hatch had ended but we decided to troll back in for the fun of it. I convinced Danny to let me try the lucky lure, while I put a small black roostertail on his rod. We trolled back to the dock and about halfway across he caught a 10" stocker to take home for Momma.
I couldn't have planned a more perfect day if I tried.
TF
This started out as a simple report and ended up more of a story about a day with my oldest son. The short version is that we had a great day of Callibaetis fishing at Lava. The long version follows!
As Momma and our youngest were up in PDX for the weekend, I took our big guy (just turned 5) up to Lava Lake for a day on the water. I usually don't call it fishing when we head out as he mostly likes to do a lot of boat driving, snacking, and napping, with the odd light saber battle or kung fu fight thrown in for good measure. He likes to fish at Lava so that he can bring a fish home for Mommas supper as the fish at East Lake have been labeled as "Stinky" because of the mercury concerns.
A while back I bought him a beautifully illustrated book about fishing called "A Good Day's Fishing" by James Prosek. In it the author calls a Rainbow Rapala his lucky lure. My son had that same lure in his tackle box so it's his defacto go to lure. He hasn't gotten a strike on it yet, but when you're 5 that's a minor inconvenience. If it's lucky in the book, it's got to be the one. I usually fall victim to the same logic on a larger scale so I guess it's hereditary...
So after spending a couple of hours dragging the Rapala around the lake without a bump and about 5,000 sugar laced calories, he decided it was nap time. Good thing too as he was bouncing around like a jumping bean from too many of the cookies and chocolate milk I had packed as extra incentive to make a full day out of it.
It was about 1:00, so I thought there might be some callibaetis coming off along the weed beds on the western side of the lake. The lake was dead still and I motored over to the northwest corner to see if anything was happening. I killed the motor and drifted in about 6 feet of water maybe 30 feet from the reeds. Before I could grab my flyrod I saw at least 10 rise forms on both sides of us. It didn't take too long to see that there were callibaetis emergers, duns, and spinners in the water all around us. I rigged a parachute cripple with a timberline emerger trailing about 20" behind it and cast it out into the midst of the action. The fly barely touched the water and it was inhaled. I struck way, way, way too hard and got back a pile of tangled leader. I clipped it all away and retied as the tangled knot of line and leader was a beauty. In the meantime, the fish continued to rise all around us. I got things tied back on and got my flies back into the ring. I again immediately hooked another fish and Danny woke up in time to see me bringing a nice fat 15" fish along side of the boat. He scrambled around to find the net and he helped me net and release the fish. I put Danny up on the fish box and I stayed on the deck so that he could help me cast. I think we got about 15 feet of line out without too many tangles. After watching the cripple for a couple of minutes there was a big rise just behind it and we were tight to a nice fish that jumped several times. This one was pushing 19" and was built like a football. He really wanted to take it home for Momma, but I persuaded him to wait for a smaller one (read stocker) as that one was too big for Momma to eat. He agreed reluctantly.
Over the course of the next half of an hour we caught and released about 5 more fish in the 14"-18" range. There were some real bruisers rising closer to shore, but I was having way too much fun casting with him to take the rod away so that I could get more line out. There were fish rising within a couple of feet of the boat and there were rise forms as far as you could see. Everybody else was fishing near the resort so there wasn't another boat on our end of the lake. It was one of those days that I'll remember always.
I was thinking that we had about an hour or two of red hot fishing left when he tugged on my sleeve and told me that it was time to head for the outhouse on the other end of the lake. It's one thing for a 5 year old take care of #1 off of the offshore bracket, but this was a definite outhouse call. I looked around and realized that I had taken the small bucket I carry for this type of emergency out of the boat the last time I cleaned it out. So I reeled in, pulled the anchor and we cruised across the lake at the posted 10 MPH speed limit to the dock. Danny sat on my lap and helped me steer the boat. We talked about nothing and everything. It was one of those moments that I'll try hard to remember when he's a teenager...
When we got back to the boat, I could tell the temperature had dropped a bit and the wind direction/speed had changed pretty dramatically. Either will put a callibaetis hatch down. We ran back across the lake just to make sure. The hatch had ended but we decided to troll back in for the fun of it. I convinced Danny to let me try the lucky lure, while I put a small black roostertail on his rod. We trolled back to the dock and about halfway across he caught a 10" stocker to take home for Momma.
I couldn't have planned a more perfect day if I tried.
TF