Halloween Muddler

On the day before Halloween I went to Yellowwood. It was a gusty day and the leaves were coming down all around.

I shared the lake with a couple and their kayaks. No other fishers.

I started out subsurface but the summer haunts for fish were deserted.

I crossed to the west side and tied on my secret weapon, a Halloween muddler. Time to see if a bass or two would be attracted to this orange and black treat.

It's a tradition. In Washington I always tied up something in Halloween colors and fished it on Halloween, which was also the last day of the season. Most years I found trout with a taste for orange and black.

I worked the HM down the shoreline giving it plenty of time to get noticed.

But alas, it was ignored. Maybe it only works on Halloween day itself.

I came to a downed tree whose submerged branches sometimes hold a school of bluegill. The last time I was at the lake I found some who wanted a small fly. My cinnamon ants from the Henry's Fork filled the bill. So I tied one on again. It worked.

Then I noticed bugs on the water. Lots of bugs. What do you know, it was an ant fall. I thought for a minute that they were cinnamon ants--what a serendipitous turn of events that would have been--but they were black ants.

Even though my cinnamon version had caught fish up against the weeds, it was shunned by the bluegill rising out in open water. So it goes.

As dusk fell the bluegill went down. I tied the Halloween muddler on again and worked it down the dam. It felt so right in the spooky, misty gloaming. I could picture a monster bass looking up, seeing the fly's enticing shape slicing across the surface, and turning for it with blood in it's eye.

That would have been a treat, but it was just a trick of my imagination.