LAKE GEORGE — On a gloomy morning at Elevenmile Reservoir, the faint of heart had stayed away. An urge to stay warm and dry had prevailed. The main parking area was all but deserted.
“Looks like we’ll be dealing with this all day,” Cletus Trausch noted, watching Larry Falk of the 11 Mile Marina backing a trailered boat — it might have been the Pequod — into the water. “Was that thunder I just heard over there?”
If so, it was distant. It didn’t really matter. Banks of dark clouds had descended over every horizon, but the temperature remained cold for a mid-June morning, even by South Park standards. Thunder-producing buildups were unlikely, but the rain already was falling, as it had, on and off, the past two days.
It was wet. It was cold. It was a good day for fishing.
“We’ll get a big fish today,” Falk — or was it Captain Ahab? — proclaimed, starting up the boat motor and easing away from the dock.
“I just checked with State Parks. They said there are blue skies at Spinney (Mountain Reservoir, 6 miles to the west). Now they just have to move over to here.”
Maybe. Maybe not. For the time being, at least, the clouds appeared to be growing darker. The wind was picking up, and waves began rolling across the surface. Save for the Gore-Tex rain suits and doughnuts, we might have been on a whaling ship somewhere off the coast of Greenland.
Fishing for Falk and his guides had been good in recent days. The major Chironomidae hatch — a boom time for fly-fishermen, sometimes a bust for others — was winding down. Trout were feeding more opportunistically, but their preferences changed from one day to the next.
Accordingly, we started with a combination of trolling rigs, hoping to establish a pattern of activity.
A pair of standard spinning rods was attached to downriggers, which take the lure to a precise depth. When a fish takes the lure, the line is released. The fish is brought in on light tackle, free to run and fight.
Two trolling rods, equipped with heavier, lead-core line completed the setup. The line has segments of different colors, each of the same length, with a monofilament leader attached to the end. The trolling depth is determined by the number of colors let out from the reel.
Though not as precise as the downriggers, the lead-core line nevertheless provides a fairly reliable way to judge the depth at which the lure is running.
On some days, the downriggers are more effective; on others, the lead-line outfits seem to work better.
“Let’s start with a Tasmanian Devil Brown Trout on one of the downriggers,” Falk directed, attaching the lure to the line. “That’s what the big fish like.
“Then I’ll put a chartreuse Arnie’s Dynamac on the lead core. Chartreuse and green seem to be the best on cloudy days.”
To cover all the bases, red and orange trolling spoons, better in sunny conditions but effective at other times, were attached to the other rods.
We neared the fishing grounds. Fish began appearing on the screen of the fish finder. Downriggers were set to 20 feet. Two to three colors of lead line were stripped out. With Falk at the helm, the boat began a slow, zigzag course.
“Fish on!” . . . The Tasmanian Devil had produced the first strike of the day, but the fish soon threw the hook.
No matter. Another soon took the chartreuse lure, was brought to net and released.
Through the rain, the activity remained steady. Though many fish got away, plenty of rainbow and cutbow trout were brought to the net. They ran as large as 18 inches and were heavy-bodied. Not bad, but where was the promised big one?
“You need a system,” Trausch said, saving a chunky rainbow for dinner. “The ones you catch are small; all the ones that get away are big.”
Clouds began slowly moving out. Though chartreuse and green still produced some strikes, red and orange were becoming more effective.
“That was a big one!” Trausch exclaimed as another average-sized rainbow threw the hook.
“It’s small,” he said as a somewhat larger one was netted and released.
Little ones, “big” ones . . . though the activity tapered off as the blue skies finally moved over, trout continued to take the lures.
The parking area remained empty. The faint of heart had stayed inside, enjoying basic creature comforts. But on a good day for fishing, the trout didn’t have sense enough to get in out of the rain.
