We haven't spent a weekend at Roosevelt since May, so we set a date and made the trip. WIth the weather reports calling for overnight lows in the teens and daytime highs in the upper 20s, I almost called our hosts to beg out, but didn't. And boy was I glad I didn't!!!! :-)

We arrived at 4:15 Friday afternoon, and I was tempted to head straight to the launch and get in an hour's worth of fishing, but wisdom overtook that thought, and we just had a nice, relaxed evening at the cabin instead.

We woke to 30° Saturday morning and no snow. After a leisurely, delightful breakfast, and nice visit with our hosts, we finally hit the water about 9:30. I decided to try some new water, so we headed downstream, directly across from the Lincoln boat launch. With the propane heater fired up inside, my wife steered the boat while I sent rigs out. Our host ties some of his own flies, but rarely ever fishes with them, and he sent us off with a half dozen of his creations. My wife decided she wanted to fish one, so she picked one that took her fancy, and that's what I sent into the depths on her leaded line outfit.

We trolled along the north shore for about 20 minutes or so, with not even a hit and I commented that I was a little disappointed we weren't getting any action. Even so, I kept up with my normal "drunken sailor" routine and as we made a turn near the shore we tripled up, yes, TRIPLED UP! As soon as we pulled the leaded line rigs out of the holders, the fourth rod went down. UNBELIEVABLE! The two fish on the leaded line rigs were big, and they put up a nice fight, but we were fueled with a sense of urgency since the two long line outfits still had fish on waiting to be reeled in! We both got our first two in the boat, very nice carryovers, Debbie's was 3lbs 1oz and mine was 2lbs 13ozs and carreid a blue floy tag. We hurriedly grabbed the other two rods and put two more nice carryovers in the cooler. What an experience! Needless to say, I decided we would stay in that area for a while longer. :-)

During one pass I finally got to see one of the bighorn sheep that we've known about there for years. Just one lone ram sitting on top of a large rock, but that really made our day! We wathced him for awhile, and he was just scanning the world like a king on his throne. Satisfied, we went back to fishing in that general area until the bite seemed to fall off. By then I had four fish in the cooler and Debbie had a two. It was almost noon so we decided to make the short run downstream to Sterling Point campground to stretch our legs a bit, and have a bite to eat. But first I wanted to go back and see if that ram was still sitting on the rock. He was, and we enjoyed watching him for a short while, then marveled at a bald eagle that landed in a snag near that same rock when I noticed movement off to my right, It was another ram and an ewe. He was a full curl plus and his nose was intent on the south end of that ewe. We watched as they slowly worked their way up a draw, and browsed on prairie scrub. Soon, we decided it was time to run to Sterling Point so off we went.

After a short break, we headed to the north side of the lake across from Sterling Point. Debbie caught two more and then we were both ready for the last one to fill our limits. I caught mine first and Debbie caught hers shortly after, and that was, what we thought anyway, the perfect end to a perfect day, but there was one more surprise left in store for us. ;-)

As we motored back to Seven Bays, I saw what looked like a line of bushes on the hillside upstream from where we saw the sheep earlier. I was thinking how odd I'd never noticed them before, and then one of them moved. I cranked port on the wheel and we slowed down to watch a whole herd of bighorn sheep slowly work their way up out of a deep draw. I tried to count them, but it was too difficult to do without binoculars. I zoomed way in with my Powershot and snapped a few pics, knowing full well the resolution wouldn't be the greatest. When we got home, I downloaded them, blew up the sheep pictures, and counted 41 sheep on that hillside!!!

This was one of the most fulfilling outings we've ever had at Roosevelt. The best fishing companion ever, quality fish, spectacular wildlife, and mild weather despite the grim forecast.

Our setups were our ususal leaded line rigs and long line mono. Today we ran the leaded line out 150' and I pulled my favorite Frisky Jenny perch pattern fly while Debbie used what we now call "Floyd's Fly". Both were tipped with a chunk of crawler. The long line mono outfits were pulling a pair of perch pattern Rip'n Minnows and they were out 195'. The flies and plugs were equally effective.

Lesson learned: We had 4 dozen crawlers with us, two dozen left over from last week's outing and another two my wife bought for this outing. I knew it was going to get cold, but thought they would be fine in the ice chest overnight - wrong - they froze!! We thawed them out inside the heated enclosure on the boat, but they were quite dead. Some seemed to have a little life left in them, and they obviously got the job done, but I will always bring them in if I know it's going below freezing now.

Surface temp was 57,1° and there was more than a health wind chop in the morning. 2' white capped waves made for an interesting ride but good fishing. The surface calmed down as the morning passed, but there was still some nice chop even as we were heading in. Outside air temp was 39° when we pulled out. We even had some nice sunny breaks in the otherwise overcast sky. Couldn't really ask for a better day on the water. :-)

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