Today Was A Day Of Indecision

I really, really wanted to go out to White Pines Lake and fish for trout from the Float Tube Cumberland. For some reason I just couldn't get my head around the drive and the flippering.

On the other hand I wanted to go somewhere, but where? I had talked, via email, to Rod (Midgeman) over at The Midge Manifesto about fishing midges, chrominoids, and nymphs for browns in a lake environment and he gave me some good ideas.

So I decided to take a drive out to the "secret" lake (that everyone knows about) and give the idea a shot. On the short drive out there I remembered a conversation (I talk to a lot of people) I had with Steve at the supermarket about the creek that feeds the "secret" lake.

Once I got there, with fly rod and Tenkara rod in hand, I started down the trail to the top of the lake.   

I was headed way back there.

The one thing I noticed about the trail was that it was a well defined trail. Apparently it gets a lot of use. The trail goes along the left side of the picture above and to the creek that feeds the lake. Once I got to the creek I rigged up my Tenkara rod and did a little dry fly fishing with a Sloan's Paralyzer.

This is the first place I stopped. I didn't get any hits, but I did see several fish moving around and making runs at the fly, just not taking it. My guess would be that since the trail was used on a regular basis, the fish were probably hammered and that was why they were so skiddish.

Small pool on "secret" creek that runs into "secret" lake.

Moving along and further upstream I came across where these trees had been cut out to make the journey up the trail easier. 

Let's make it as easy as possible

These slugs were right on the other side of the log cut outs.

Watch out for the slugs

I fished a couple more spots without getting any hits and then the creek became quite overgrown so I did a U-turn and headed back with the idea of going over to the other inlet and fishing a dropper rig.

The instructions I got from Rod were to do a beadhead on the bottom for weight and something like a Prince Nymph on the top under an indicator. I already had the Prince Nymph tied on the tippet all I had to do was add a little more tippet and I planned to use a beadhead Copper John for the dropper.

Never happened, I got interrupted by a guy on the dam reeling in a couple of browns about 14 inches as I passed by. I decided to fish off the dam with the dropper rig and after a couple of casts (the water was moving swiftly toward the spillway and the rig needed constant recasting out) I did one more and ended up with the line wrapped around my rod, the railing, and with knots galore to the point I would have to replace the leader. It was a mess that would be way past the 10 minute rule for any knot, so I cut off everything and headed to the truck for my little Okuma and a box of Kastmasters. I didn't have any backup leaders with me to replace that mess.

Turns out the guy I was fishing next to (his name was Rick) is someone who has fished at Middle Bar Bridge, knows a few of the people I know from there, and man is it a small world.

By now I'm about three hours into the fishing day and my back is giving out. I've been having a good bit of trouble with the back and standing for any length of time seems to be the worst thing for it. About 11:30 I packed up and said my goodby's and headed home.

I'll be back up there shortly trying the dropper rig, but this time directly to the inlet, no side trips.

Mark