Another perspective on the fishing

Al Adams one of our "regulars" sent this to me a couple of weeks ago and said I could share it.

In his words:

Our "guys trip" started many years ago (I take notes on all our trips now but the thought didn't occur to me early on). I think we started with 10 guys or so probably 20-25 years ago. The fishing was usually pretty lousy. I don't remember ever keeping many of the fish we caught. Usually we kept just the fish that would not have lived.

Over the years the fishing has been marginal at best as I have mentioned. Anyone who has come up here over the years can attest to that. We continued to come up because Ross Lake is truly an amazing, unique place. We surely would have been in BC salmon fishing if catching was our sole objective. This year was a different story. Our core group of guys dwindled to 3 this year. From barely daybreak to dark we were fishing. The really good news is we caught fish. And not in the typical way. We trolled sinking fly lines with flys. Large flys, size 6 hooks. We tried different patterns each day. We fished so close to the shore at times the inside rod had to be careful not to hit the rocks. We hooked a lot of fish! The pictures we took were only of fish that were at least 17". The largest was 21". On a side note - the weather was perfect. There was virtually no wind, all day, every day. Temperatures were in the high 60's in the afternoon. In fact it hit 71 degrees one day. Unbelievable! We have fished in snow storms in the past. To be able to wear t-shirts in October at Ross Lake was weird to say the least. By the way, we also caught two bull trout- probably would have gone 21+". I think I've caught two bull trout in all the 50 trips I've made to Ross over the years. With one exception, we released all the fish we caught. I would encourage everyone else to do the same. I would love to have to buy 10 lb. tippit material next year.

Al Adams

Eric Brewe

Ken Brewe

The old mans comment:

I would also like to come clean and say I have been one of those fly guys for some time. I personally have no use for that "pop gear" and when some of our guests started to dial in fishing the lake with flys I started to pay attention and I mean "what work" I have to go fishing kind of attention and I must say I fished Ross Lake more this last season than I have in the past 30 years combined and I had a blast! All I can say is stay tuned. If I'm not here to greet anyone next year I'll probably be out fishin.