“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…..” – Charles Dickens, opening of A Tale of Two Cities
As John mentioned in a previous post, this summer had some of the worst water conditions up here on The Mountain I can remember. It sure is nice to see improvement with the arrival of fall….and it really crashed the party.
On 10/14/18 I fished Big Lake and today, 10/16/18, I hit Horseshoe Cienega.
I heard that South Cove of Big Lake was fishing well. I did not find that to be true this past Sunday, but did find fish near the mouths of Railroad and the adjacent cove. After offering the standard fare of nymphs and midges, I had better luck with dark colored Simi Seal Buggers. One really nice one slipped away, but I did get about a half dozen into the net in the 13-15″ class. They were fat and hard fighting.
Today on Horseshoe Cienega was the opposite. They wanted the midges and were short striking the buggers. I was fishing large zebra midges and while orange and copper was the hot color, the tried and true black and silver worked as well.
They were really hammering the midges off the dam. At first I was fishing them under an indicator, but eventually was just casting them out on a floating line and using a hand-twist retrieve. Several of the takes darn near ripped the rod out of my hand.
One word of caution, watch out and be prepared for weather!
So glad summer is over.
-Mike McLaughlin