Fisherfolk.......Not a bad day on the water today, not real good but not bad considering.   It was supposed to be a semi wet, cloudy day.  Turned out mostly sunny which is not what I wanted.   Got to to the lake around 9:30 AM and no sooner on the water than a noisy helicopter came over and settled in at the village end of the lake.  I couldn't see what it was up to.  Then it took off.  Great! they are putting more fish in!.  No such luck.  By the time I got around the corner, I could see some flagging. As I approached, four hard hatted men came out to collect boxes of stuff: many water bottles, coolers, and boxes.  Turns out there was a fire there a few days earlier and these guys were putting out the remains.  I saw no smoke.  Just as I was thinking that there wouldn't be any fish around with all the previous racket, this lady struck. I was in 45 ft of water with my #4 sink. Fly was my own invention, a copper braid bodied leech with sparse tuffs of brown maribou along the back and tail.  This fly caught all my large trout last year here. Jumped 5 or 6 times, raced towards me twice cutting the water like a shark.  It is bigger than it looks (of course it does, I'm a fisherman!)  Hit like a ton of bricks. Very exciting (for a change). She's back in there safe and sound.  I got her in pretty fast but she turned on her back for a second and I was able to grab the hook for a quick shot. Surface temp is 70F.  Getting close to the limit for Rainbows (75F/24C).  I pushed my transponder down as far as I could and the temperature didn't change. 

Decided to quit at noon which was just as well as the generator went on.   The hapless campers at the first site were leaving too.  They said the helicopter came in a couple of times on Saturday and that they had the generator going all day.

Over at a nearby brookie lake, all was calm.  The reason was the ST of 72F.  No sane trout will go there.  Of course a couple of stockers occasionally did.  Got a 8 inch stocker on the Stubinski Special, the Golden Olive Jansen Leech.  They are growing quite well. In a healthy lake, trout can grow 1 inch per month and some of these shallow lakes are real bug factories.   The fly is the same colour as the chara weeds.  A number of years ago, I saw a leech  that colour.  It is my best fly for that lake but I must tie some smaller ones as I had several good hits but only this hookup.  Not sure I'll go back there until the Fall unless we get some cool weather. Fish taste terrible from this lake so you don't want any belly ups.  Saw one miserable boatman.  So much for the "hatch" this year. 

We tried to time the trip to Kenauk to take advantage of a few weeks after ice-out, avoid Cast and Blast which tends to blast out the trout and hopefully not freeze.   We also thought to allow the lakes to rest a little from the weekend by starting on a Tuesday and leaving on a Friday.  We mostly achieved what we strived for, however we hit some cold, rainy weather.  This worked well for those in Muskrat who fished Collins as Brook Trout like that kind of weather, even some howling wind.  They bit like crazy.  Average catch for the 6 participants was 25/day.  And the sizes were good too.  A few 20 inch trout were caught but most of the fish were 14-16 inches.  They had heavily stocked Collins a couple of years earlier.  It might have had something to do with the hatchery closing.  Hopefully, the hatchery will re=open this year as the fishing has not been as good there since it  closed.  Green Lake did not fish well at all.  The fishers who spent the time on the water were lucky to get 15 per day, some got very few.  Rough Lake was occupied on the previous weekend and they caught on average 10 per day per fisher.  They are pretty small at Rough, around 13 inches.  Grey Ghost, Hammill's Killers, Orange and Black WB were best at Collins and Bob Sheedy's Pheasant Tail Crayfish was my best fly there.  HK's and Olive Leeches best at Green.