Big Lake, Becker

I hit Big Lake last Saturday with Tim.  Cloudy day, nice chop on the water.  We landed 9 between us with Tim landing the majority of those.  We were using c’mids under bobbers…found fish just couldn’t get them to go.  We were still fishing to the same cutt’s we had been for the past three weeks.  Quite a few were still chasing each other around but wouldn’t touch anything.  We had to go deep for them.

Tuesday I fished with one of my old AZFF partners, Mike McLaughlin.  We never got more than 100 yds past the boat dock and must have landed a couple dozen between us.  Same fish, same flies, different day???  Mike went back the next day and the fish had moved out even further.  He had to go with sinking line and leeches to get any to play.  Good to see and fish with Mike.  Seems like we closed down the shop 100 years ago.  I miss it.

Today (Friday) I hit Becker with Mike M, Tim and Ron and a buddy of Tim’s.  It was the old proverbial news when we got there.  You should have been here yesterday.  Evidently the lake had a monstrous ant hatch and everyone cleaned up the day before.  Fishing was tough for us today.  I’m sure the fish were still sated from the ant hatch.  Only way we could get any action at all was with #12 JR Hoppers in tan or cream.  I tried #10’s and never got bit.  Never caught a monster but all but one were in the 18″ range and in great shape.  They didn’t fight extremely hard as the water temp was 70 pretty much the whole time I fished it.  The fish all swam away healthy though…no floaters.  Monsoons are coming in pretty regularly so hopefully it will cool things down a bit.