Rattlesnake Lake

Living 2 minutes away from Rattlesnake Lake has its benefits. So, after the rain stopped pissing down around 3pm this afternoon, I decided to cruise around in my pontoon for a couple hours. There was a light to medium breeze, and a bit of choppy water when I arrived. Because the weather was crappy all day, there were only a handful of boats on the lake -- just the way I like it. I trolled my G-Willie from the boat launch all the way to the far side of the lake. On the way, I picked up a couple 12" fish and had more than a few grabs in the first 30 minutes or so. Sweet, no skunkage for me. It took me a while to reach the far side, fighting the choppy watter most of the way. I was observing a few folks on this end working different techniques around the stumps and calmer watter. I kept trolling around the stumps to no avail. After two grabs from some submerged stumps, I decided it was time to change tactics. Perfect timing! The clouds started to break up and the wind calmed. The water evened out nicely, and I spotted the rises more clearly. As far as I could tell, most people were stripping subsurface, trying to entice the larger specimins in the area. I said, "screw it" and tied on a dry fly. The rises weren't super consistent, but enough to make it interesting. Plus, it is always way cooler to see a trout smash the surface, but I kept my expectations in check. Casted out to an area where I saw a few rises while I was tying on my dry fly. Waited. Waited. Nada. Re-casted a few more times after seeing more rises. Nothing. Changed position and casted again. I heard one of the local Ospreys soaring above me and took a glance. When I attempted to focus on my fly again, the rings were already spreading out and my fly was gone. Damnit! I missed the first take because of the stupid Osprey. Ok, regroup. The good news is that they are taking my dry fly offering. I casted out to another likely spot, this time COMPLETELY focused on the fly. WHAM! The water erupted. I set the hook. My line goes limp almost immediately. Damnit! He stole my fly. Must have been a bad knot, or perhaps in my excitement of seeing the strike, I did one of GJ's classic mega-hook sets and ripped my fly off. At any rate, I completely blew my load -- at least I was more relaxed now. I tied on another fly, cursing under my breath the whole time. Casted out to around the same spot a few times. Nothing. Repositioned and casted again. SIP! Fly is gone. Game on. A good hookset this time and it feels like a pretty good fish, even though the take wasn't as exciting as the last. The trout soon started ripping line until it went airborne and did one of those backflips into the water like GJ did at the Madison a couple summers ago. The fatty fish flew out of the water a couple more times and ripped some more line until I finaly calmed the beast, all 20" of him. Sweeeeeeet! That pretty much made my trip -- I didn't care what happened the last 30 minutes back to the boat launch. A 20 incher on a dry (with airials) -- doesn't get much better than that! This capped off a pretty sweet lake fishing weekend, fishing Lone Lake yesterday. I think GJ will give the report on that. Until next time... -Josh