Nice evening on Fontal. The sky opened up providing blue skies and temperate waters. There is not much to speak of on this outing, except that I landed a 10" healthy rainbow trout off a fine looking wooley bugger. All strikes seemed to come off of trolls going into the wind (using full-sinking line). Both Jason and I lost a few fish from missing short strikes and I suppose that we could have fared better by being a little bit more trigger happy.

By the way, the fine looking wooley bugger isn't really anything that great, it just has a twist that I wasn't used to doing. When tying, rather than palmering the hackle from the bend to the eye, merely tie on some medium wire at the bend. Use whatever body you want to and secure it behind the head. Now, take some really webby hackle (size proportional) and begin palmering it behind the head going back to the bend. At the bend, take your wire and carefully, but tightly, wrap the wire to the head and tie off. What you get is a wooley bugger that really "breathes" when you strip it in!

By the way, at the inlet we saw dozens of juveniles taking tiny midges in the shallows, yet no rises from adults. I hooked my trout on a drop-off, so maybe when the water cools, night fishing with minnow patterns in the shallows may be a winner??

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