Sly Park

Saturday morning I got up at 4:30am, hitched up the boat and headed for Sly Park, a.k.a. Jenkinson Lake. I got to the lake at 6:00am and launched by 6:15. The wind was coming across the lake pretty good, so I started out trolling by the first dam and islands. First I dragged broken-backs but switched to mid-depth plugs after an hour or so. I headed over to the second dam and trolled along the south shore. There was a huge hatch of mayflies and trout were lazily rolling all over the surface. I have never seen a lake hatch as thick as this one, and it went on for quite awhile. After seeing that the fish were near the surface in deep water, I put on a Kastmaster and a Mepps Syclops. I took my first rainbow right at the point of the narrows with the Kastmaster, a beautiful 13" wild rainbow with big black spots. I took a planter about an hour later on the Syclops. As I trolled back towards the second dam, a bald eagle swooped down and took a trout about 150' in front of the boat, then turned and went right over the boat about 50' up, pretty cool! By now the wind had picked up again so I headed in to the dock. My buddy Arnie was tooling around in his new pontoon boat, we chatted for awhile and I headed home. A nice day all in all!