Well, I finally dusted off the fly rod and reel to get ready for another season. The weather has been beautiful and warm the past few days with daytime highs in the 70's. Work, unfortunately, has kept me from fishing sooner. I spoke with Doug Post store manager at True Value on Tuesday while getting a new blade for the lawn mower and Doug told me he "spanked" them at Steamboat Lake on Saturday evening. According to Doug he caught almost 30 fish in 1-1/2 hours using a beadhead prince nymph and fishing the far side of Meadow Point. Doug is basically a truthful man, so I have spent the whole week waiting for a chance to get up to the lake.

I finished tying some heavily weighted Black Woolybuggers Friday night with the plan of fishing Lake Pearl in the morning and Steamboat Lake in the afternoon. This was the fly of choice early last year and I was confident that it would work again.

I got to Lake Pearl around 9:30 am. There is still a lot of snow down to the shoreline. Walked the float tub to the north side of the lake and put –in. Fished hard for over an hour with out a strike. At least for me Pearl is famous for being a "slot-machine" lake. Either I do really well, or I just float around two hours getting a lot of leg and arm exercise. Did enjoy, however, watching a bald eagle make several low-level circles around the lake. The bird was very puzzled as to what I was. Awesome site!