This Skeptic Turned Into Big Believer

If a fisherman you’ve fished with only once calls you and says he’d like to take you to a lake where you can catch one big brown trout after another, you’d likely be skeptical.

I was more than skeptical.

This guy, I thought, has got to be exaggerating. All fishermen exaggerate; some tell taller tales than others. But I suppressed my inclination to make an excuse for not accepting his offer.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll take a chance. Where and when do we meet?”

The caller, Lowell Mills, a longtime Northwest Airlines employee, set the time and place. We transferred my fishing equipment to his pickup the next morning and drove to Rock Lake, about 40 miles south of Spokane.

Yes, Rock Lake, the long, deep lake that has a well-deserved reputation as a dangerous lake for boaters. When it’s murky, as it is now, jagged igneous rocks just under the surface and hidden by murky water can rip holes in boat bottoms and damage motor skegs.

The wind was blowing 10 to 15 miles per hour when we started fishing along the shoreline, but it gradually picked up, gusting to 20 or miles per hour and making difficult the positioning of the 16-foot bass boat.

Mills, a gregarious former West Virginian, fished with everything but flies until 1991, when he discovered the satisfaction of catching fish with flies. He now fishes frequently in Alaska and around the Northwest, thanks to the airline’s policy of providing free travel for employees.

We tried dry flies, mainly Muddler Minnows. The previous week, Mills said, he’d caught numerous browns on dries. But the browns ignored our offerings. Time to go deep with leech and crawdad patterns. Crawdads are one of trouts’ favorite meals.

We changed our floating lines for sink tip lines, tied big patterns on our short leaders and began casting the flies to within inches of the shoreline and steep rock cliffs. As the flies sank, we’d retrieve slowly, sometimes getting snagged on rocks.

To my surprise, the browns hit the sunken flies. With visibility down to 12 to 15 inches, how could they see the mottled brown patterns? I underestimated their eyesight. When they hit fairly near the surface, we’d see them zooming up like dark shadows.

As we moved, slowly at first and then too fast as the wind picked up, we hooked one brown trout after another. Most were 14 to 16 inches long, but a few were longer.

We lost at least one out of three that we hooked because we couldn’t “play” the fish properly. We had to “horse” the browns as the boat, pushed by the wind, moved 50 to 100 feet every few seconds. As a result, hooks pulled out of their mouths.

As those who have fished Rock Lake know, the water can be 50 to 100 feet deep 30 to 40 feet off shore. We couldn’t anchor the boat.

When the wind subsided, though, we’d hook and release the fish.

Periodically, Mills, when seeing a brown take his fly or while trying to boat one, would holler, in his West Virginia accent, something like, “It can’t get better than this.” And, of course, I agreed.

Mills is a man who likes to express his feelings, sometimes boisterously, usually joyfully.

Where else in the Inland Northwest can a fly fisher hook 20 to 30 big brown trout during 6 hours of fishing? Certainly, not at Clear, Silver, Medical, Waitts and Dry Falls lakes, where there are big browns.

Mills and I kept returning to the south end of the lake. When the wind is from the south, the water is fairly flat the first half mile. However, waves build up gradually until they’re 1 to 2 feet high and even higher 3 to 4 miles to the north.

Mills’ bass boat rocked and rolled as we worked our way north. We sat on elevated, cushioned seats, rocking with the boat and casting our flies.

Finally, after hooking more than 50 brown trout and one big rainbow, we called it a day. You’re not seeing a typo. We did hook more than 50.

What a day it was. I hadn’t caught as many trout in one day since I had fished Bayley Lake, a fly fishing-only lake, earlier this year.

Mills suggested we fish the lake again before the water warms a few degrees. Once the water becomes too uncomfortable for the browns, he said, they’ll stay in deep water and the shoreline fishing will not be productive. Already, he said, there are indications that many browns have left the shoreline.

Sure, I told him as I gradually became accustomed to the steadiness of land, I’d like to fish the lake again. But only on a relatively calm day.

The next time I fish the lake, I thought, I’d put a No. 6 floating line and a similar weight fast sink tip line in my tackle satchel and I’d have a good supply of weighted crawdad and brown leech patterns.

Rock Lake is now on my short list of lakes that produce memorable fishing.