Another venture into our semi-private Quebec lake a couple of hours north of Ottawa.  This lake gets no fishing pressure to speak of even by the five odd residences on the lake.  We rarely see another fisher on the lake.  It has been a strange year.  Everything is late and wet.  It had rained the night before.  A cold front moved in at noon and I was actually feeling uncomfortably cool in the tube.  Of course I didn't bring my jacket.  Why would you so close to August!  Both of us had only caught about five sizeable LM when it was time to head back.  I tried double flies with different colours.  It turns out that "white" was the colour!  This 22 inch LM was nibbling on the fly and I thought it was the black WB which the small ones liked.  Get off you stupid little fish!  Oh, this is a stupid BIG fish!  I used an intermediate line all day.

We've been having some hot weather the past few days but no rain so the river should be more settled.  Thought I would try for another evening go on the ole 'Miss'.  Thinking that the best way to catch a larger fish would be to bring my 3wt rather than the 5/6 wt Switch I've been using this year.  Worked really well.  This was the second fish I caught right away.  With the lighter gear, it took a bit longer to get in but that is what it is all about.  SM do a lot more acrobatics than LM.  In a way, they are the most exciting fish we have around here.  In any given stretch of water, if you have some faster moving stuff, that is where they will be.  I cast into the 'seam' with a dry line and a cone head fly.   Pretty good action for two hours fishing 22 minutes from home!  Lots of smaller fish caught on the dry fly in the rapids.

Time for local waters.  It is too hot to go for trout, not that there are many around to be caught this year.  There is a widening of the Mississippi River which is about 20 minutes from home so it is easy to load the tube for some evening fishing.  A couple of hours before sunset is the best time.  It is also a good idea not to go on the weekend because the place is popular and everything with fins gets scattered.   I got about five SM like this one and a variety of 'others' some on the dry fly.  My favorite bass fly as described in earlier posts is my first go-to fly.  But after I lost it in a nearby tree, I put on one of my 'failed trout flies', an 'orange something or other' which caught just as well.  No need to use anything other than a  dry line as the fish are in the shallows.   The bass, this night, were near the faster moving water.