Waneta Lake 11/12
Guided Mark I. for close to a full day on Waneta Lake starting around 9:30 am. It was very cold this AM so we met a little later than usual to give the air a chance to get above the freezing mark. I don’t as a rule guide Waneta Lake or muskies for that matter, but it is a small lake and Mark loves the chance to fly-fish for muskies, so around once a year we head over there. Last year he hit the jackpot with 3 great fish on the fly in one day – a 47″er, a 44″ and one around 35″. We weren’t expecting that kind of a day today by any means but we were hoping for one musky on a fly, which in itself is a great accomplishment.
Overall conditions were fair to good as far as I could tell, though at times our wind died. We had light winds, mostly cloudy skies and cooling (fall) water conditions. Water temp was 46. One factor that I think played against us big-time was the water clarity which was fairly poor for Waneta. There was a lot of algae around and we had less than 2′ of visibility. Not terrible gear fishing conditions but not great for our flies. No hits or follows today. Funny but I did see a (most likely) stocked fish from this year around 10″ long with an alewife in its mouth. Water level was low and it was a slight pain getting out and coming back in. My skeg dinged a few things from time to time. Next time maybe we’ll have a few flies tied with some rattles. Mark had some gaudy flies and they did push a lot of water.