Sleepy Fish in Lewiston Lake

Today was the day for us to fish for trout on Lewiston Lake.  The lake is a reservoir that mediates between Trinity Lake, California and the Trinity River as it flows down to the Klamath River.  Lewiston Lake is known for its rainbow trout and brown trout.  But they start to winter over once the weather grows cold.  We were hoping that the trout were still active.  The lake is certainly beautiful:

In fact, with the colors of autumn, it's downright gorgeous:

This was our day to try our hand at trout fishing on the lake.  We hope to chase Steelhead on the Trinity River later in our stay.  But today, we are after those little trouties we know and love.  So out we went once the temperatures rose to near 60F.

Here's Kathy flashing the sign of victory as we set out on our quest.  The trout will determine:

We felt that the trout were most likely to be cruising along the far shore of the lake, so, after trying our luck among the reeds on the near shore, we headed to the opposite.  There were plenty of coots to divert our attention:

Unfortunately, while we spotted an abundance of mayflies (including some monstrous caddis flies), we saw no trout rises, and, as far as we could tell, the trout had checked out.  That didn't mean there wasn't a lot of beautiful scenery:

After fishing the far bank of the lake, we crossed back to our own side.  We caught a beautiful view of some of the mountains in the Trinity Alps, with Lewiston Lake and doughty fishing boat in the foreground:

It was up to us to find what we could, where we could.  This alder leaf provided some consolation as it floated in the utterly calm waters of the lake:

Our best efforts came to naught when trout were involved.  We were reduced to finding photo opportunities where they presented themselves:

The lowering sun presented us with some beautiful scenes, especially along the banks of this utterly calm lake:

We agreed to make one more attempt at finding trout, at a stream inlet on the southwest shore of the lake.  Alas, nothing was to be found.  Here you see Kathy returning in dejectment from her attempts to roust the trouties out of their subaqueous shelter:

Finally, we gave up and simply enjoyed our paddle on the lake, recognizing that we were not going to catch any trout.  We finally concluded that they must already be hunkering down for the winter, starting their winter sleeps, and simply not feeding at all.  There were huge numbers of flies hatching all across the surface of the lake -- and nary a rise.  Well, at least we had the scenery:

By the time 5:00 pm was arriving, we knew the fishing was over.  We beached our kayaks and sadly gave up our quests for those sleepy fish:

But it was not all lost.  We did salvage some encounters with wildlife, such as
this video of a flock of coots flying simultaneously across the surface of the lake.

Our philosophy is:  sometimes you eat the fish, and sometimes the fish eat you.

Better luck next time.