Decided to fish the old home waters while visiting my mother, who lives down the road from Penrose State Park. Bay Lake's shortcoming is that it is so shallow (not more than 15 feet) that the trout get fished out in the first few weeks after opening day. Also, the milfoil growth is often and usually so bad as to rival a biblical plague. After a month or so after opening day, the water warms up to the point of making life miserable for rainbows. However, what bodes ill for trout can be a boon for other species, so bass was what I targeted. I hit the lake around 10:30 and worked clockwise around, keeping my nose pointed towards the shade. Unfortunately, I forgot my stringer back in Seattle. R & D was going to be the theme for the day. The first fly I used was a chartreuse popper that I purchased at The Morning Hatch Fly Shop in Tacoma (just off of 38th St, in the last strip of businesses on the northwest end). On the recommendation of a bass hunter floating by, I shot
it in tight under some branches in the shade. Immediately--and I say IMMEDIATELY, like a 1-and-a-half count--a bass snarfed it in off the surface. Big fun! It wasn't a lunker, at maybe between one and two pounds, but it sure was entertaining. After my third fish in maybe 20 minutes, I thought to try a "nymph" I tied the previous week, after eyeballing the lake during Mother's day. I noticed that there were tons of salamanders everywhere, to the point of fooling some of the bank fishermen into thinking there were trout rising. Since the 'manders were colored a reddish-brown, I tied up a bead-headed mini-woolly bugger (brown chenille, hackle, and marabou and gold tinsel) thing on a size 10 nymph/scud hook during the week. This created a fly that swam with a perfect sine wave movement when I tested it. When I flicked it into any shaded area, tons of hits and takes. Even tiny sunfish and bluegill with mouths hardly big around as the fly were stuffing it down. I spent
the rest of my time using that mini-bugger until it was torn apart.

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