Lake Leake October 3rd, 2010

4.45 am this morning saw myself jumping out of bed and heading to Lake Leake for a spot of early morning wind lane fishing.

 
 As I approached the property called “Windfalls” about 10 klms from Lake Leake, I also encountered  a heavy fog.
“Oh well”, “it will lift”.... I thought, the question was how quick??
Upon arrival at the Lake Leake boat ramp, I could see the water was looking like glass and previous experience told me that today was not going to be easy..... and it wasn't.!!
I immediately unloaded the car topper, launched, and headed out to “god knows where” on the Lake.... hoping to come across some feeding fish......I motored along slowly until I could see some insect life on the water, this was mainly made up of smut, green midge and the odd brown beetle.......once I found a decent enough splattering floating  about, I sat stationed in the one spot until I heard the tell tale slurping noises of feeding fish.....about half an hour later.
As the sun started burning off the fog and I could see a bit better, I also started seeing the odd rise, “ever so gentle” as they sucked down what was on offer, you had to look very hard to even see them and once spotted you had to look even harder to see any subsequent rises.....Mike Stevens and I have witnessed this before on this water and it is bloody hard work to pick them up let me tell you.!!!
 
I tied on one of Matty Byrne’s Lake Leake patterns, a dry made up of brown hackle and seals fur, confident this would do the trick, this was until I saw the slightest ring “wobble my fly”...a refusal.
 
Time for plan B
 
The fish weren't thick, but those that were ,fed reasonably consistently.
I tied on a buoyant dry fly and hung  “my old favourite” an orange bead headed nymph 18 inches under it , I then observed the direction that the trout were heading and set the trap... a long cast, 2 metres in front.
 I couldn't get close and any more than two false casts would see them spooked .
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I finished with 3 and lost one.
 Two of the fish caught, I would describe in about 70% condition and one was a “ripper” by anyone’s standard, a strong fish that slugged it out for quite a while.
All were around the 3.5 pound mark.
Once the sun came up, I headed home after a couple of enjoyable hours on this very scenic Lake.
 
 That’s about all I can tell you ......Lake Leake,  worth a look.....
 Todd Lambert