Lake fishin' today!

Leaving in about two hours, as soon as I whip up another couple of lake buggers. Wind should be whippin it up by then, but I'll just fish off the upwind shore.
Nawahtzel, I think, as I like the drive to that lake.  I can actually take a route that only involves going thru two stoplights, and they're usually green when i hit 'em! Fun winding/dippy Blue Slough Road boogie to 107 and nice drive all the way to Monte, then a brief jaunt on hyw 8 to Brady, then a nice drive up the Satsop valley.
I know I'll have to C&R most of the afternoon so I don't score my limit of cookie cutter stocker bows there too soon and have to quit too early!  Holding out on filling out my limit until dusk, just so I have a chance at a holdover! Too easy. Lazy day of bendo on the 4 wt!!
See ya all at the lake! I'll be the guy dragging lake buggers around in my U-12. 1pm until dusk. This is as non-technical as flyfishing gets.
Bring a flyrod or at least some dark wooly buggers to slo-o-o-o-wly drag around in anywhere from 10 to 15 feet of bottom depth. (Fish will be anywhere from bottom to the surface). Believe me, that really works the best! You can drag a bugger with spinning gear and a split shot or two. I always make gear fishers do that when I take them lake fishing for trout in my john boat, as I am capt of that tin beast, and I will be mainly slow trolling wooly buggers, or anchoring along dropoffs or shoals and casting.
Head to the far shore!

Here's the report:  Got there a little later than I had planned, at about 1:30 and was on the water by 2. There was one guy on the lake in a small rowboat, heading in to his dock. Another fly angler showed up  as I was getting ready to launch. He had a lightweight skin canoe (21 lbs) he had just finished making. Virgin voyage for him. We compared fly patterns that we were using, and headed out in different directions.

It was sunny, with a light E wind, about 4 or 5 mph. Perfect for wind-drift trolling.

A couple other guys showed up about then with a 14' tinny and trolled.

I started out with a battered Halloween Leech that previously foiled trout had chewed down to what now resembled a snail imitation. So I fished it very slowly, near the bottom. Missed a strike, then hooked into a little 12"er which fought pretty well on the 4 wt.
Did some casting/retrieving in the light breeze, but I was using an older, soft action 4 wt rod that wasn't too effective for that (I like my 9' TFO Jim Teeny 4 wt better for casting, but chose the older soft rod only because I hadn't used it in a while). So I went back to trolling. Didn't get any more hits for a good half hour, then checked my fly, only to see that it had gotten snarled up with wind knots when I was casting, and I hadn't noticed. Always check your terminal gear the moment the biting action seems to slow!

Fish were showing up on my finder at mid-depths in 14' to 17' of water.

So I put that rod away and deployed my other rigged rod, that had a large monster nymph concocted from pheasant rump feathers, and immediately got a hard strike and hookup with a fat 14.5"er! That thing was a great jumper and fought well.
I released my next one, which was smaller, but hit that fly hard. Then, I had another very hard strike and hooked up a good fish, but it got off. I trolled some more without a hit for nearly 15 minutes and suspected something was afoul. Stripped my line in and the fly was gone...that last fish took it!

Tied on my chewed up veteran of several dozen battles, the snail bugger, and was back in business. I released a couple more, then filled up my limit by dusk. Most trout were 13" to 14" with a couple smaller ones and the fat 14.5"er.  Good eatin size!

The wind died and the surface glassed off toward dusk, and I was the last boat on the water (only 4 all afternoon, including myself) as I paddled back across the lake to the launch.
5-star 2-fly day, it was!

Sounds like a great day.  I'm heading out to Kapowsin to try my luck at some early LMBs

Good luck and have fun! I hear that Kapowsin can be tough early fishing. If you try there for trout, you might want to try the area near the mouth of the cove on the S side of the island.

There were so many bugs in the water, that there was no chance of a hungry fish.