I went back to Big Twin Lake in Winthrop over the Memorial Day holiday.
It was a much easier drive now that Highway 20 has been plowed. I breezed up and back so easily, I don’t think a lot of people knew that the high mountain pass had finally been opened for the year because there were too f
ew cars on it for a holiday weekend..
I thought I could catch a lot of fish on damsel and mayfly nymphs because that’s what was working the previous weekend.
That was indeed the case, but I always forced myself to try some different things because that’s when I learn.
I was wondering whether Big Twin was still a good lake to night fish, and it is. I used to fish at night all the time, but I do a lot less of it now, especially if I’m successful during the day.
Night fishing can be a little scary and it usually ends with something getting caught somewhere or a big snarl because you can’t see well even if you bring a flashlight.
Anyway, Big Twin was great right at dark. I had one cast where I caught one fish and he threw the hook, which was immediately grabbed by another fish, who threw the hook, only to have it grabbed by a third fish that I landed.
Three fish on one cast. You don’t see that very often.
I was using a weighted black mini leech near shore and I couldn’t keep the fish off it. I’m also fishing Big Twin around midnight with a huge black woolly bugger with great success, but there was no need to stay up that late last weekend.
Some lakes are better than others for night fishing. I’m glad to see that Big Twin is still good for it.
Lesson Two: The words winter kill for lakes are the equivalent to rattlesnakes for rivers.
I heard two weeks ago that Little Twin Lake, the smaller, shallower companion to Big Twin, had suffered a winter kill, which it often does.
Winter kills can wipe out a lake and I had assumed that’s what had happened to Big Twin.
But I was fishing with a guy on Monday who’d spent Sunday on Little Twin. He said there was a winter kill, but the fish that were left in Little Twin were bigger and fatter than average. He basically said he had fished very heard all day for 10 fish and they were all nice fish.
So the next time someone tells you there was a winter kill. Ask for more details. In rivers, when the fishing has been great, some angler choose to tell you not about the fish, but about how there were just tons of rattlesnakes along the bank.
I’ve gotten to equate the words rattlesnakes with great fishing. Now it looks like that might be the same for winter kill.
Didn’t get to fish LIttle Twin this trip, but I plan to hit it later.
One thing I am worried about at Big Twin is I have yet to see a great chironomid hatch there after seven full days of fishing. Usually that are some nice black chironomid hatches, but they’ve been sparse this year.
I fished chironomids a lot with some success, but I did much better with bloodworms, the larval form of chironomids.
I also did a little poking around in the muck so I could show you what they look like. (See photo.) There are some nice large ones, which were similar to what I was catching my fish on.
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