Published November, 2009, Northwest Fly Fishing Magazine
Washington’s ‘Baetis King Returns Chopaka Lake
By Terry W. Sheely
Two years out of chemical rehab and clean again, Chopaka Lake is gorgeous in the morning light, finally free of its cataleptic smallmouth and predatory triploid infestations, back to pushing 20-inch rainbows and stepping up to reclaim title to callibaetis king of Okanogan County—if not Washington State.
When you bust out of the dirt road dust, crank around the downhill curve and for the first time see the rise forms dimpling the mirrored surface of this fly-only anomaly; well, if your heart doesn’t leap and your breath catch you are either a soul-less spinner or dead.
Chopaka Lake is where fly fishermen belong, and chironomid soakers put down roots. It just may be the hottest callibaetis mayfly lake in the state.Located on a distant walled-in funnel at just under 3,000 feet elevation above the Sinlahekin Valley, Chopaka Lake is 148.8 acres of trout water squeezed into a narrow 1½ mile-long ladle. Depths in the southern half, the handle end, average less than 10 feet and support fertile nests of bottom vegetations that grow incredible insect fodder, especially mayfly nymphs. The bowl of the ladle is on the north end where the lake bottom plunges to more than 70 feet, providing a summer-long source of cold water, the depths sometimes needed to protect good trout from ospreys and sunburn, and life insurance against the oxygen depletion that too often creates winter kill in this environmentally harsh corner of north-central Washington.
It’s a lake that couldn’t have been more perfectly designed for its purpose. And that purpose for the last 40 years, as decreed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, is to provide quality fly-fishing.
The northern escarpments of Grandview Mountain loom above the eastern shoreline in a ragged topography that fades to a broken wall of cliffs where mountain goats and rock climbers should be. Strings of red trunk Ponderosa pines and tough junipers wind through the cliffs in slide chutes and draws that hide mule deer and coyotes.
The dirt hellion they call Chopaka Grade slants up from the edge of Rattlesnake Mountain at Toats Coulee Creek, angles across the slide-scarred face of Quartz Mountain, roller coasters through pine woods and comes into Chopaka in the prairie grass and steppe shrub on the west side. At the neck of the narrows, a little closer to the shallow water than the deep, is a primitive DNR campground, a serviceable WDFW boat ramp, scattered sun shelters and picnic tables most holding inflatable boats, rod cases, cold coffee, hot beer and waders left to dry in the sun. The Grade and the eight miles of gravel and dirt road through Loomis State Forest are infamous for potholes and ruts, but most fly fishermen have conquered worse—and after state crews patch the spring runoff damage, they conquer this one.
Some will drag small camping trailers and motorless boats behind them. Bank fishing is possible, but difficult and complicated by beds of cattail reed that extend offshore and sagebrush, willows and hillsides where back casts need to go. If on your first trip you don’t bring a belly boat, rowboat or pontoon boat you will on your second. Last fall, about the time that nights were starting to pack frost, but the afternoons were still dry and warm with summer, I fished Chopaka with my son Brandon. We carried boxes of wet patterns and 4 and 5 weight rods to check the lake’s temperament and see how it was handling rehab. When I reported the headstrong 19¾ inch rainbow that bent Brandon’s 5-weight into a day-long grin, WDFW fish biologist and Chopaka Lake caregiver Bob Jateff was heartened but not surprised. “We had three different groups of fish planted in the lake for the first fishing year” he said. That would be the first year after the late 2007 rotenone treatment that purged the rainbow water of leftover triploid rainbows that Jateff described as cannibals, and a plague of stunted smallmouth bass planted by some bucket-packing ne’er-do-well.
According to the biologist, the trout in the first restocking in early May were rainbows 8-10 inches long. By first frost they had grown to an impressive 15-16 inches.That stocking was followed by a plant of 14-inch rainbows that bloated up to 20 inches before snow fell, and in June WDFW planted fingerling 4-inch rainbows, which already last fall were showing up as thick 10 and 12-inch trout. Those catchable-size planters were a one-time event that WDFW intends to jump-start sport fishing, and from now on the plan is to repopulate exclusively with fry plants.
But do the math on the number of catchables and the growth rates and take a deep breath. Those first-planters are plentiful and getting big. ‘09 is going to be a good year!
The growth rate, while Jateff doesn’t consider it over-the-top exceptional, in my opinion is comfortably positioned well above good. I hooked one 18-inch fish, sight casting a No. 8 olive Wooly Bugger at a blurb and swirl in the arrows that crashed out of the water several times looking every bit like a license plate. Fat, football—pick your porky adjective, this fish fits.
Jon Anderson, WDFW’s Resident Native Species Fisheries Manager told me that the state is backing off on planting Chopaka with triploid ‘bows, hatchery productions sterilized to induce unnaturally fast growth rates. Evidence was found, he says, that the monster trout were feasting on rainbow fry which will be the backbone of future stocking efforts. And fry plants are ineffective, Anderson says if ravaging ‘loids are at large.
“From what was learned through sampling over the past few years,” WDFW District fish biologist Bob Jateff believes that stocking "trophy (triploid) trout" into selective gear water is inappropriate and possibly self-defeating - especially in the case of Chopaka Lake. “The lake was managed through fry plants for years, and provided a premier fly-fishing only water. It is WDFW's intent to restore that excellent fishery.”
Jateff is WDFW’s man on the water at Chopaka and he’s convinced that, “Chopaka did well for decades because it was planted with diploid rainbows and we’ve got a chance now to go back to a clean slate and start with fingerling plants—no triploids.”
Statewide, triploids are the heart and soul of WDFW’s mega popular trophy trout program, and Jateff pondered long and hard before recommending against them at Chopaka. “For the past half-dozen years the lake has been stocked with mostly triploid rainbows. They live longer and get bigger, but they become ferocious predators and I believe they were having an impact on our fingerling plants,” Jateff contends.
In the aftermath of the apocalyptic ’07 rehab, WDFW counted a few 5-pound holdover trips among the corpses. “These were beautiful fish, deep bodied, healthy,” Jateff admits and probably explain those breathless campfire tales of scorched reels and shattered egos.
If WDFW follows the master plan for annual plants and plumps Chopaka with unaltered fry, Jateff believes, “in a couple three years the lake should be in top production.”
When I first heard of Chopaka I bought into the fly club chatter—that the lake is either mayfly or skunk, but I’ve since learned that it’s far from a one-fly lake even if that fly can be matched with a chopped pattern called the Chopaka May a dry with the underside of the front hackle trimmed off so the fly rides belly down flush on the surface, spent spinner-like. To be sure, mayflies are definitely the dominate entrée that porks these ‘bows, and there’s a lot of evidence that it may be the best callibaetis lake in the state, and to come here and not fish some form of callibaetis mayfly some time would just be wrong.
Still, I would strongly advise diversity in the box. April and May can see clouds of midges blowing up in the morning and evenings begging for emergers in 16s and 18s, or dry Griffith’s gnats on 6X even 7X tippets. And there are caddis (carry No. 14-16 dark caddis every day in May and June and keep them handy for the occasional late summer eruption), terrestrials especially summer hoppers, and bring assorted sizes of green Carey Specials.Damsels come off fairly regularly May and through June with infrequent hatches all summer. And there is enough wildlife on the bottom to justify carrying woolly worms, woolly buggers, seal buggers, pheasant tails, hare’s ear, marabou leeches in green, black, brown and red, damsel nymphs, and scuds.
May is prime callibaetis fishing. Standard Chopaka surface fare would include No. 14-16 Callibaetis Cripples, gray Comparaduns, and Sparkle Duns, and a painfully slow horizontal retrieve just below the surface with an intermediate line can be deadly with Flashabou callibaetis nymphs and Pheasant Tails nymphs.
I hit trout wind-drifting the shallow west bank of the south end with a purple and a black Carlton Special a thinly dressed and even thinner hackled wet fly that could pass for a starving woolly bugger. The fly was designed for the Methow River cutthroat, but has also become a standby for me in Okanogan County lakes.
I must confess, though, that while Brandon and I were working up enough fish to keep us smiling by swinging and drifting small leeches, pheasant tails, a zug bug and several sizes of green bugger patterns we were getting shined by a deadly chironomid dangler. For lack of his real name I dubbed him Dangler and he was persistent and consistent. His cartopper was anchored bow and stern in about 10 feet of water in the same general neighborhood that we were swinging, twisting and crawling wets. Dangler was using a strike indicator (yarn, I think) and appeared to be suspending two chironomid patterns—one on a dropper--just above the weed tops, in about 10 feet of water. About every 12 minutes his rod would go down, his arm would come up, and another fat rainbow would be educated. For believers, chironomid dangling is suspenseful, exciting and amazingly productive.
For me, it’s stillfishing tiny flies, sitting motionless, eyes riveted to the bobber, waiting for a trout to cruise up and slurp. If you have patience it’s deadly at this lake. Brian Chan, a friend and probably the most devout chironomid angler I know, has turned the technique into a science-based religion and has the patience to extract a deadly toll from most lakes.
Dangler had the same trait. Unfortunately for me, I don’t.
The best chironomid danglers wait for a windless, dead flat day, spool on a floating line, attach a strike indicator at the leader/line knot, attach a leader that will sink to just above the bottom, attach a pair of chironomids in different colors and sizes. Standard tied TDCs get a workout here. Let the leader settle to suspend the patterns and wait for a fish to run into the rig. Brian has found chironomids in black, brown, red (blood worms), tan, green and cream, and ties them from No. 24 to No. 8s. Most common are 12s and 16s.
A splendid alternative option recognizes Chopaka’s legendary callibaetis mayfly nymphs. Callibaetis nymphs can be cast with an intermediate line and 10 to 12-foot leader/tippet combination, counted down, and retrieved, slowly with measured hand twists just above the tops of bottom weeds. Callibaetis love the grass and there are a few football fields of green carpeting the bottom of Chopaka’s south end. Callibaetis nymph fishing is equally deadly to chironomid dangling (in my heavily biased opinion) and involves casting and retrieving; actions that my impatience requires. Callibaetis are mottled tan, brown and green and the most effective patterns at Chopaka follow this color guideline.
Chan’s research has documented that each succeeding hatch of ‘baetis is smaller than the previous and believes that to match the various stages throughout the season chironomids should be tied for spring on No. 12s, summer on 14s and by fall be down to 16s.
Speckled callibaetis mayflies hatch most profusely on overcast days and those, unfortunately, are rare summer and fall in the sunny Okanogan. Still, be watchful for a Chopaka hatch between 9 and 10:30 on summer mornings, later when a decent wind chop is distorting sunlight penetration.
By late afternoon Chopaka regulars will be up from their naps, rigged and pushing away from the bank to take up casting stations south of the campground. Some will be killing time casting, sinking and slowly retrieving mayfly emergers, and hooking a few fish. When the emerger patterns start to really produce Chopaka regulars swap out their wet tackle for dry rigs, because they know the spinner fall is getting close, and everyone is really waiting for the evening spinner fall. Almost without fail the fall will offer the day’s finest dry fly opportunities, and probably the most exciting action of the day casting to big gulpers and leading progressive rise paths.
It would be sacrilegious to venture out, rigged for dries, without a supply of Chopaka Mays that will cover rise hatches 16 through 10.
Like most everything else at this changeable lake, tippets need to vary with the season.
Early in the spring it’s possible to get by—even have a fine day--with 5X tippets, especially if using fluorocarbon, but by mid-summer make a concession to rainbow wariness, cloudless skies, and fishing pressure and switch to 6X..
A couple of Chopaka regulars confide that when competition from ‘baetis purists gets overpowering, they smile and hang a 180-degree turn from the crowd and slow troll streamers and nymphs near bottom.
“After a trout gets bit by a chironomid or spinner fall a couple of times it may swear off and be ready to eat a marabou leech or Carey Special, especially green, and even egg-sucking leeches up to No. 4, woolly buggers size 6, and sculpins in the No. 4 to 6 range,” is how they explained it.
Chopaka has been managed exclusively for fly fishing since the 1970s, a rarity then, and while fishing pressure steadily fell during the rise of the bass infestation, the lake is expected to come back as strong as the heyday.
According to biologist Jateff, “as many as 1,000-2,000 fishing days are estimated for the (’09) season, and anglers should average 5 to 6 fish per day within the 14 to 20 inch range. Yearling trout should average about 12-14 inches, two year old fish 14-16 inches, and three to four year old fish [stocked as catchables] 16-20 inches.”
The strict fly rules stays in place: two flies, barbless single-point hook not to exceed ½-inches from point to shank and conventional fly line. No weights attached to the line or leader, and knotless landing nets. One fish daily limit, (the one fish limit is in place to prevent wasting trout throat or gill hooked), no minimum size, no motors. The lake is open for fishing from the last Saturday in April -Oct. 31 and both of those dates may be adjusted by snowfall and ice.
The lake was going dark when Brandon and I left last season, a little Alpen glow touching the high meadows of the surrounding mountains. A range bull was wandering down the outlet creek where a coyote was running when we arrived. On the lake, we could see the blacker shadows of kick boats and pontoons in the black shadows of falling night.
We were too far uphill to hear the fishermen shout, but we know they were.
Spinners were falling.
When you bust out of the dirt road dust, crank around the downhill curve and for the first time see the rise forms dimpling the mirrored surface of this fly-only anomaly; well, if your heart doesn’t leap and your breath catch you are either a soul-less spinner or dead.
Chopaka Lake is where fly fishermen belong, and chironomid soakers put down roots. It just may be the hottest callibaetis mayfly lake in the state.Located on a distant walled-in funnel at just under 3,000 feet elevation above the Sinlahekin Valley, Chopaka Lake is 148.8 acres of trout water squeezed into a narrow 1½ mile-long ladle. Depths in the southern half, the handle end, average less than 10 feet and support fertile nests of bottom vegetations that grow incredible insect fodder, especially mayfly nymphs. The bowl of the ladle is on the north end where the lake bottom plunges to more than 70 feet, providing a summer-long source of cold water, the depths sometimes needed to protect good trout from ospreys and sunburn, and life insurance against the oxygen depletion that too often creates winter kill in this environmentally harsh corner of north-central Washington.
It’s a lake that couldn’t have been more perfectly designed for its purpose. And that purpose for the last 40 years, as decreed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, is to provide quality fly-fishing.
The northern escarpments of Grandview Mountain loom above the eastern shoreline in a ragged topography that fades to a broken wall of cliffs where mountain goats and rock climbers should be. Strings of red trunk Ponderosa pines and tough junipers wind through the cliffs in slide chutes and draws that hide mule deer and coyotes.
The dirt hellion they call Chopaka Grade slants up from the edge of Rattlesnake Mountain at Toats Coulee Creek, angles across the slide-scarred face of Quartz Mountain, roller coasters through pine woods and comes into Chopaka in the prairie grass and steppe shrub on the west side. At the neck of the narrows, a little closer to the shallow water than the deep, is a primitive DNR campground, a serviceable WDFW boat ramp, scattered sun shelters and picnic tables most holding inflatable boats, rod cases, cold coffee, hot beer and waders left to dry in the sun. The Grade and the eight miles of gravel and dirt road through Loomis State Forest are infamous for potholes and ruts, but most fly fishermen have conquered worse—and after state crews patch the spring runoff damage, they conquer this one.
Some will drag small camping trailers and motorless boats behind them. Bank fishing is possible, but difficult and complicated by beds of cattail reed that extend offshore and sagebrush, willows and hillsides where back casts need to go. If on your first trip you don’t bring a belly boat, rowboat or pontoon boat you will on your second. Last fall, about the time that nights were starting to pack frost, but the afternoons were still dry and warm with summer, I fished Chopaka with my son Brandon. We carried boxes of wet patterns and 4 and 5 weight rods to check the lake’s temperament and see how it was handling rehab. When I reported the headstrong 19¾ inch rainbow that bent Brandon’s 5-weight into a day-long grin, WDFW fish biologist and Chopaka Lake caregiver Bob Jateff was heartened but not surprised. “We had three different groups of fish planted in the lake for the first fishing year” he said. That would be the first year after the late 2007 rotenone treatment that purged the rainbow water of leftover triploid rainbows that Jateff described as cannibals, and a plague of stunted smallmouth bass planted by some bucket-packing ne’er-do-well.
According to the biologist, the trout in the first restocking in early May were rainbows 8-10 inches long. By first frost they had grown to an impressive 15-16 inches.That stocking was followed by a plant of 14-inch rainbows that bloated up to 20 inches before snow fell, and in June WDFW planted fingerling 4-inch rainbows, which already last fall were showing up as thick 10 and 12-inch trout. Those catchable-size planters were a one-time event that WDFW intends to jump-start sport fishing, and from now on the plan is to repopulate exclusively with fry plants.
But do the math on the number of catchables and the growth rates and take a deep breath. Those first-planters are plentiful and getting big. ‘09 is going to be a good year!
The growth rate, while Jateff doesn’t consider it over-the-top exceptional, in my opinion is comfortably positioned well above good. I hooked one 18-inch fish, sight casting a No. 8 olive Wooly Bugger at a blurb and swirl in the arrows that crashed out of the water several times looking every bit like a license plate. Fat, football—pick your porky adjective, this fish fits.
Jon Anderson, WDFW’s Resident Native Species Fisheries Manager told me that the state is backing off on planting Chopaka with triploid ‘bows, hatchery productions sterilized to induce unnaturally fast growth rates. Evidence was found, he says, that the monster trout were feasting on rainbow fry which will be the backbone of future stocking efforts. And fry plants are ineffective, Anderson says if ravaging ‘loids are at large.
“From what was learned through sampling over the past few years,” WDFW District fish biologist Bob Jateff believes that stocking "trophy (triploid) trout" into selective gear water is inappropriate and possibly self-defeating - especially in the case of Chopaka Lake. “The lake was managed through fry plants for years, and provided a premier fly-fishing only water. It is WDFW's intent to restore that excellent fishery.”
Jateff is WDFW’s man on the water at Chopaka and he’s convinced that, “Chopaka did well for decades because it was planted with diploid rainbows and we’ve got a chance now to go back to a clean slate and start with fingerling plants—no triploids.”
Statewide, triploids are the heart and soul of WDFW’s mega popular trophy trout program, and Jateff pondered long and hard before recommending against them at Chopaka. “For the past half-dozen years the lake has been stocked with mostly triploid rainbows. They live longer and get bigger, but they become ferocious predators and I believe they were having an impact on our fingerling plants,” Jateff contends.
In the aftermath of the apocalyptic ’07 rehab, WDFW counted a few 5-pound holdover trips among the corpses. “These were beautiful fish, deep bodied, healthy,” Jateff admits and probably explain those breathless campfire tales of scorched reels and shattered egos.
If WDFW follows the master plan for annual plants and plumps Chopaka with unaltered fry, Jateff believes, “in a couple three years the lake should be in top production.”
When I first heard of Chopaka I bought into the fly club chatter—that the lake is either mayfly or skunk, but I’ve since learned that it’s far from a one-fly lake even if that fly can be matched with a chopped pattern called the Chopaka May a dry with the underside of the front hackle trimmed off so the fly rides belly down flush on the surface, spent spinner-like. To be sure, mayflies are definitely the dominate entrée that porks these ‘bows, and there’s a lot of evidence that it may be the best callibaetis lake in the state, and to come here and not fish some form of callibaetis mayfly some time would just be wrong.
Still, I would strongly advise diversity in the box. April and May can see clouds of midges blowing up in the morning and evenings begging for emergers in 16s and 18s, or dry Griffith’s gnats on 6X even 7X tippets. And there are caddis (carry No. 14-16 dark caddis every day in May and June and keep them handy for the occasional late summer eruption), terrestrials especially summer hoppers, and bring assorted sizes of green Carey Specials.Damsels come off fairly regularly May and through June with infrequent hatches all summer. And there is enough wildlife on the bottom to justify carrying woolly worms, woolly buggers, seal buggers, pheasant tails, hare’s ear, marabou leeches in green, black, brown and red, damsel nymphs, and scuds.
May is prime callibaetis fishing. Standard Chopaka surface fare would include No. 14-16 Callibaetis Cripples, gray Comparaduns, and Sparkle Duns, and a painfully slow horizontal retrieve just below the surface with an intermediate line can be deadly with Flashabou callibaetis nymphs and Pheasant Tails nymphs.
I hit trout wind-drifting the shallow west bank of the south end with a purple and a black Carlton Special a thinly dressed and even thinner hackled wet fly that could pass for a starving woolly bugger. The fly was designed for the Methow River cutthroat, but has also become a standby for me in Okanogan County lakes.
I must confess, though, that while Brandon and I were working up enough fish to keep us smiling by swinging and drifting small leeches, pheasant tails, a zug bug and several sizes of green bugger patterns we were getting shined by a deadly chironomid dangler. For lack of his real name I dubbed him Dangler and he was persistent and consistent. His cartopper was anchored bow and stern in about 10 feet of water in the same general neighborhood that we were swinging, twisting and crawling wets. Dangler was using a strike indicator (yarn, I think) and appeared to be suspending two chironomid patterns—one on a dropper--just above the weed tops, in about 10 feet of water. About every 12 minutes his rod would go down, his arm would come up, and another fat rainbow would be educated. For believers, chironomid dangling is suspenseful, exciting and amazingly productive.
For me, it’s stillfishing tiny flies, sitting motionless, eyes riveted to the bobber, waiting for a trout to cruise up and slurp. If you have patience it’s deadly at this lake. Brian Chan, a friend and probably the most devout chironomid angler I know, has turned the technique into a science-based religion and has the patience to extract a deadly toll from most lakes.
Dangler had the same trait. Unfortunately for me, I don’t.
The best chironomid danglers wait for a windless, dead flat day, spool on a floating line, attach a strike indicator at the leader/line knot, attach a leader that will sink to just above the bottom, attach a pair of chironomids in different colors and sizes. Standard tied TDCs get a workout here. Let the leader settle to suspend the patterns and wait for a fish to run into the rig. Brian has found chironomids in black, brown, red (blood worms), tan, green and cream, and ties them from No. 24 to No. 8s. Most common are 12s and 16s.
A splendid alternative option recognizes Chopaka’s legendary callibaetis mayfly nymphs. Callibaetis nymphs can be cast with an intermediate line and 10 to 12-foot leader/tippet combination, counted down, and retrieved, slowly with measured hand twists just above the tops of bottom weeds. Callibaetis love the grass and there are a few football fields of green carpeting the bottom of Chopaka’s south end. Callibaetis nymph fishing is equally deadly to chironomid dangling (in my heavily biased opinion) and involves casting and retrieving; actions that my impatience requires. Callibaetis are mottled tan, brown and green and the most effective patterns at Chopaka follow this color guideline.
Chan’s research has documented that each succeeding hatch of ‘baetis is smaller than the previous and believes that to match the various stages throughout the season chironomids should be tied for spring on No. 12s, summer on 14s and by fall be down to 16s.
Speckled callibaetis mayflies hatch most profusely on overcast days and those, unfortunately, are rare summer and fall in the sunny Okanogan. Still, be watchful for a Chopaka hatch between 9 and 10:30 on summer mornings, later when a decent wind chop is distorting sunlight penetration.
By late afternoon Chopaka regulars will be up from their naps, rigged and pushing away from the bank to take up casting stations south of the campground. Some will be killing time casting, sinking and slowly retrieving mayfly emergers, and hooking a few fish. When the emerger patterns start to really produce Chopaka regulars swap out their wet tackle for dry rigs, because they know the spinner fall is getting close, and everyone is really waiting for the evening spinner fall. Almost without fail the fall will offer the day’s finest dry fly opportunities, and probably the most exciting action of the day casting to big gulpers and leading progressive rise paths.
It would be sacrilegious to venture out, rigged for dries, without a supply of Chopaka Mays that will cover rise hatches 16 through 10.
Like most everything else at this changeable lake, tippets need to vary with the season.
Early in the spring it’s possible to get by—even have a fine day--with 5X tippets, especially if using fluorocarbon, but by mid-summer make a concession to rainbow wariness, cloudless skies, and fishing pressure and switch to 6X..
A couple of Chopaka regulars confide that when competition from ‘baetis purists gets overpowering, they smile and hang a 180-degree turn from the crowd and slow troll streamers and nymphs near bottom.
“After a trout gets bit by a chironomid or spinner fall a couple of times it may swear off and be ready to eat a marabou leech or Carey Special, especially green, and even egg-sucking leeches up to No. 4, woolly buggers size 6, and sculpins in the No. 4 to 6 range,” is how they explained it.
Chopaka has been managed exclusively for fly fishing since the 1970s, a rarity then, and while fishing pressure steadily fell during the rise of the bass infestation, the lake is expected to come back as strong as the heyday.
According to biologist Jateff, “as many as 1,000-2,000 fishing days are estimated for the (’09) season, and anglers should average 5 to 6 fish per day within the 14 to 20 inch range. Yearling trout should average about 12-14 inches, two year old fish 14-16 inches, and three to four year old fish [stocked as catchables] 16-20 inches.”
The strict fly rules stays in place: two flies, barbless single-point hook not to exceed ½-inches from point to shank and conventional fly line. No weights attached to the line or leader, and knotless landing nets. One fish daily limit, (the one fish limit is in place to prevent wasting trout throat or gill hooked), no minimum size, no motors. The lake is open for fishing from the last Saturday in April -Oct. 31 and both of those dates may be adjusted by snowfall and ice.
The lake was going dark when Brandon and I left last season, a little Alpen glow touching the high meadows of the surrounding mountains. A range bull was wandering down the outlet creek where a coyote was running when we arrived. On the lake, we could see the blacker shadows of kick boats and pontoons in the black shadows of falling night.
We were too far uphill to hear the fishermen shout, but we know they were.
Spinners were falling.
