Fly Fishing Report Oct-25,2011

   Another season is coming to a close, just one more weekend until we
   close the gates for the year. The actual season will close in Mono
   County on Nov-15, but the marina will close on Oct-31. This has been
   the most unusual fishing season that I can remember. We started out
   with beautiful weather for the opener, but we had very cold water.
   In the years that we have cold water, the midge fishing is usually
   pretty slow that first month. On top of the cold water, we had just
   miserable weather through all of May. We were lucky to get out once
   or twice a week because of the cold and windy conditions. Fish and
   Game gave us a nice surprise in May with 6 or 7 truck loads of 8 to
   10 inch Browns. These guys grew very fast, and were 12 to 14 inches
   later in the summer. The weather finally cleared in June, and the
   water warmed up. Leighton Springs and Sandy Point provided most of
   the action for the entire month. We also picked up a bunch of nice
   fish way up off of Green Banks. With July came our first algae bloom.
   It really shuts things down on Crowley. Fortunately, Bridgeport Reservoir
   was full, and the fish moved up into Buckeye Bay for us. We had several
   good days up here, including a couple of 50 fish days. The fish are smaller
   on average than Crowley, but they pull just as hard. Once the algae
   died off in August, the fish started to move into McGee Bay. and Little
   Hilton. Little Hilton was full of big fish for a couple of days until
   Fish and Game started dumping in all of the babies for next season. All
   these babies made a bee line for Little Hilton, and shut us down. You had
   to catch 15 or 20 small ones for each good one. With all the high water
   this year, the fish seemed to stay right in the McGee creek channels for a
   long long time. We fished these channels right into September this year.
   Mid August through mid Sept had to be the best "BIG" fish stretch I've
   seen in quite a while. Lots of 20 inch fish, with many into the 22 to
   24 inch class. Because of the high water this year, we were forced to
   fish deep most of the summer. Kent's deep water indicator came to the
   rescue. It made fishing those deep 18 foot weed edges a snap. Mid
   September through mid October brought us our second algae bloom. This
   one seemed to linger on and on. The only clear water was way up in the
   north arm where the Owens River comes in. Between this clean water and
   all the weeds, we had a small 200 yard stretch of channel that stayed
   clean. The fish were not always there, but it was the only game in town.
   The last couple of weeks here in October brought cooler water temps and
   shorter days. This got those thick weeds to start dying off. The fish
   took this opportunity to move in and fill up on all the perch that were
   hiding from them all summer in the thick weeds. We have been catching
   fish all over the lake; McGee Bay, Leighton Springs, the North Arm, and
   Crooked Creek. Anywhere you could find a weed patch, you would find
   the fish. Next season is looking really good, Fish and Game has dumped
   in about 500,000 small fish this year, which is way up from last year's
   stockings.

   Finally, many thanks to everyone who has used these reports to keep up on
   Crowley, and for all the kind words I've received from you about these reports. 

                                                                        See you in the spring, Mickey      

        Here are a couple of nice fish caught by friends Trevor and
                   Brennan from Leighton Springs this week