My tires lost what little grip they had, which sent my truck sideways in the soupy mud. I let off the gas, spun the wheel, and narrowly avoided my back end falling off the road and into the borrow ditch. A quick check in my rearview mirror showed my buddy Alex somehow keeping his truck—which was pulling our drift boat—straight and true through the same bit of sketchy road.
We were four-and-a-half hours into a five-hour drive to the lake, where we’d launch the boat and start a 30-minute paddle to the inlet. Our working theory held that all the fish in the lake would be stacked near the inlet, where kokanee salmon would likely be finishing their spawning run. If trout didn’t follow the salmon upriver, then they’d still probably hang out near the drop-offs to ambush smaller fish eating the last of any active insects before the lake froze over for the winter.
But a snowstorm the night before made me reconsider how great the fishing would be as I navigated another sloppy section of road. Obviously, it was just warm enough for the snow to melt, but the low ceiling of clouds made it feel like another storm was just around the corner. I don’t put much stock in a falling barometer impacting trout behavior all that much in rivers, but in lakes? Well, I’m not a good enough lake angler to make a statement there. All I know is that I’ve had both exceptional and awful days immediately following late-season snowstorms like this one.
By the time we made it to the primitive boat ramp, the drift boat had a new paint job. We’d neglected to put the cover on before starting the drive, so both the exterior and interior were smattered with gobs of thick, nasty mud. Thankful that we’d be wearing waders so we didn’t have to sit in the stuff, we rigged up, launched, and started the paddle across the quiet, mostly still lake.
We’d been up here three weeks ago, fishing in short-sleeves in the last of October’s brilliant high-altitude sunshine. The kokanee were thick in the river, and fish were stacked in the inlet. We caught our target species—lake trout—but not many, and nothing of real size. We were back because the falling water temps and increasing threat of ice settling on the lake made us think the fish would be in close, packing on the pounds and spawning in a frenzy.
Once the boat bumped against the shore, we clambered out and set up around the river inlet channel. Without a high sun, we couldn’t see into the water to look for fish. So we threw casts into the current, let it swing our streamers, and stripped them back in all, based on the hope that the fish we’d found three weeks ago were still here, and hopefully had brought their friends, too.
Not much happened for a couple hours, until I finally switched from a white streamer to a black one. Five casts later, I felt the telltale soft tick of a lake trout eating my fly. These fish are unique in that they don’t tend to slam streamers with the same ferocity browns or rainbows do. It’s like lake trout want to lick and taste the fly before fully committing. Once you’ve hooked one, though, they run and put a bend in a 7-weight that no brown or rainbow of comparable size can do.
The fish wasn’t big—maybe 17 inches—but it was what we’d come for, so the trip felt like a bit of success. But Alex still needed to catch one. After another half-hour of no action, we hopped in the boat and started paddling around the far shore, where we’d seen some rock piles, sandbars, and more drop-offs on our last trip.
In a bay between two points, Alex’s streamer got tagged by what turned out to be the fattest rainbow we’ve caught from the lake. When he got hit again a few minutes later, I beached the boat, and we walked out to the drop, throwing the longest casts we could with limited room behind us. Then, Alex got hit by what turned out to be a 19-inch lake trout, the biggest we’ve caught yet from this lake (although I saw one that pushed 30 inches in early October).
Those were the only two lake trout we caught that trip, despite the water temps being perfect, and all the other factors seemingly lining up. We couldn’t quite crack where they were, and we had a suspicion they were deeper than we were fishing. But for only the second trip in our newfound effort to catch lake trout on the fly rod, actually succeeding felt like a win.
These will be the last lakers we catch until spring, when the ice comes off, and hopefully the big ones are in shallow, feeding on all the other fish drawn in by sunlight, active bugs, and the promise of yet another year.