It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Oh wait! That's no way to start a fishing report. Let me start over….

Call me Ishmael.

Er….. let me try this again…..

After the last BAS team outing on Lon Haggler on Nov. 23^rd where only two members joined the expedition, we were hoping that there would be one more opportunity to have the team at full strength before year's end. The thought of one more trip for 2011, fully staffed, was tantalizing to say the least.

The past week or so of being cooped up indoors had the team members scouring weather conditions for even a moderate hint of decent weather. While no one said it out loud, each of us was hoping for one more outing. Each day while eagerly checking 14 weather forecasting web sites for the target areas on the 2011 fishing agenda, our hopes that we could assemble another outing would first be raised to astronomical levels by a vision of better weather on the way, only later to be dashed on the cold, hard, granite rocks of weather dependent reality.

Mid week of November 27th showed some promise of reasonable weather conditions with air temperatures and wind speeds shifting slightly from day to day to the point where it looked like Nov. 30th would have a good window of fishing at Lon Hagler Reservoir.

The NOAA forecast was calling for temperatures in the mid to upper 50s with winds dropping from double digits down to between 1 and 3 miles an hour on Wednesday. The homebrew weather forecast web site that Augie used kept insisting that the winds would be a steady 8 mph. It turns out that the mechanical wind gauge used by the amateur forecaster at the awshucksweather.com site was locked up at 8 mph. The root cause of the problem was an overzealous application of Gorilla Glue on the broken popsicle stick which was used to hold the gauge on to the main weather panel of cardboard and pipe cleaners.

Emails were exchanged between the team members attempting to get full member participation. Augie gave a green light for a go. Chester sent his thumbs up for a go. Al, mumbling something under his breath, committed as a go. This left Mike as the only non responder. Hours went by and nothing was heard from Mike. Leaflets were dropped from the air. Homing pigeons were sent to all corners of the earth. CIA wiretapping and eavesdropping stations were put on full alert. FBI operatives and the Paparazzo (that's the Paparazzi to you non Italians) were pressed into service attempting to find out if something dire had happened to our fly fishing friend. Silence.

Then suddenly normal email communications with Mike were re-established. He reported that due to ongoing contractual obligations, guitar and amp synchronizations, acoustic check routines, mixer and equalizer modifications, major house electric panel updates to support 440 volt, 6 phase AC power, custom flat guitar string winding efforts, phase noise shift measurements, reflexology hand and finger treatments from a hippy chick in Ward, Nyquist frequency response plotting, fan club event management duties, real vs. apparent power calculations, amplifier wheel bearing lubrications, recording studio microphone placement studies, mood lighting adjustments, spherical near-field radiation measurements, 24 track tape wow and flutter analysis, Asian massage appointments, time domain reflectometry studies, recording studio calendar scheduling, Smith chart radiation evaluations, acoustic tile placement analysis and a speaking engagement at the Calaveras County California Cannoli Convention, he would be unable to attend. In other words, he was busy and couldn't go fishing with us.

Retired Colorado Fuel and Iron steel workers that had been out of work since the strike of 1997 were elated to find out that Al and Augie were going spin casting again and had placed new orders for Super Dupers. They once again fired up the blast furnaces and rolling mills to start fulfilling Augie's and Al's order. They were soon seen smelting, rolling, drawing, extruding, shot peening, plating, polishing and painting Super Dupers in every conceivable size and color.

At the last check on Tuesday evening, the weather appeared to be stabilizing and on one final Wednesday morning check we agreed the trip was on. Al arrives at Chester's house right on time. Chester is somewhat disorganized and fumbling with various pieces of gear makes trips back into the house before he finally gets his act together and manages to load his gear in the back of Al's Explorer. We mount up and happily head up the road to Augie's. As we head north, the temperature slowly rises from the mid 30s up into the high 30s. Upon arrival at Augie's we find him all smiles. We briefly chat about how nice the weather is. We have high hopes. The temperature breaks into the low 40s. The fishing cloud of doom that followed us from Niwot isn't getting any bigger, but then again it doesn't appear to be getting any smaller. What will the day bring?

As we approach the subject of which route to take, Augie graciously agrees to Al's direct route. We leave with Augie in the lead  heading north on county road 17 and the temperature again begins to climb. 43, 44, 45! Could it be? Everything is looking splendid! But dang it! It falls back to 44 just as we approach Lon Hagler. Could this be a bad omen? NO! The BAS team brain power goes into overdrive bringing all paranormal forces into focus by trying to mentally move the temperature gauge up. Success! Again it rises to 45. As we pull into the north east side parking area at the reservoir the temperature is bouncing between 44 and 45.

As soon as Al gets out of the car he is chomping at the bit to start heaving steel plates into the reservoir, but Augie insists on giving Chester time to don his waders and rig up his fly rod. After his brief Charlie Chaplin clothing routine, Chester is set. The three compatriots with fishing gear in hand and in apparent good order head down to the water. Augie and Al are toting spinning rods and reels and each lugging a 50 pound box of piscatorial paraphernalia. Chester is bringing his fly rod and reel with a net total of 11.4 grams of fishing flies. Al is jauntily sporting his newly purchased sunglass camera expecting to get live action shots of astute angling action.

As we reach the shoreline, Augie points out a good wading spot and Chester takes Augie's advice and heads out to a wading shallow and stops himself about 35 feet out from the shore. Augie and Al immediately rig up and start whistling metal slabs out towards the water about 50 feet in the air on either side of Chester.

It appears to be slow going at first. Not much action from any of the parties. Within 30 minutes or so both Augie and Al wander off. Al goes west to an area where he had luck on a previous trip. Augie heads off to the east towards the dam. Chester is left in the water practicing delicately casting his sopping wet green and black wooly bugger to fish unseen and hoping for the best.

Chester gets a strike. Then two strikes! Finally he hooks into a nice rainbow and is pleased that this is the first fish he has ever taken on a wooly bugger, his first fish at Lon Hagler and he finds out later the first fish of the expedition! Chester has visions of easily meeting his 4 fish quota in order to make a 2 fish per trip average for the year.

The weather keeps looking better. Air temperatures slowly sneak up into the fifties as the morning progresses. The wind comes up slightly then drops again. The cloud of doom dissipates slightly and the fishing conditions seem to improve with time at the reservoir. For a brief period there is full sun on the water.

Al comes back by Chester and announces that he is heading over to the dam to see if Augie has scored. Chester continues to meander around aimlessly both to the west and east on the shallows with a few more strikes but with landing no fish. Chester switches it up and for grins tries a red salmon egg fly. No action after slinging it out there multiple times. Finally he submits to failure and heads over to the dam to catch up with Al and Augie.

Checking in, Chester learns that both Augie and Al have landed two rainbows each. Al is oh so close to his 3 fish quota in order to make it a 2 fish per trip ratio. Cast after cast there is no action. Chester decides to try a midge nymph based on Augie's observations and advice. He pulls out a size 22 black micro midge nymph and after fumbling around for 15 minutes trying to tie it to his tippet accidently drops it in the rock crevices on the dam face. Mentally scrolling through pretty much every available four letter word in the English language, he then decides on a handy size 20 pheasant tail left over from the last outing and casts about 20 times with no luck. Augie casts Super Duper after Super Duper. Chester then switches to a 20 size Trico dry fly as Augie sees some signs of insect and rising fish activity. Again he has no luck. Suddenly Al lands another nice rainbow using a bronze Super Duper personally signed by everyone at the Colorado Fuel and Iron steel mill! Al meets his quota and is now fully upgraded to Al 2.0 just in time to close out the 2011 season! Augie continues to make nice long casts near what should be perfect rainbow territory. Cast, retrieve. Cast, retrieve. Cast, retrieve. It's a spin casting mantra that hypnotizes and dupes all but the savviest fly angler. Al's casting has now degraded as a result of the joy of his upgrade impacting him with an immediate case of the dreaded Super Duper twitching fever (see last report) which is now obviously affecting his casting. Chester's casting continues to stink as he barely gets anywhere near his target area and his results clearly show the fruits of his labor.

Al and Augie mention free pie Wednesday which suddenly shifts our focus and attention to food. It is no wonder why we are hungry as the clock is now well past 2:00 PM and the slices of toast for breakfast are a distant memory. The lure, pardon the pun, of pie so strong that we decide to pack in the day and head off to Perkins. Surprisingly Al is the last man on the water!

We all start walking towards the car and as we scan the reservoir we see signs of fish rising! As we get closer to the car, the temptation is just too great and Chester charges off through the weeds like a delusional maniac to get out in the shallows again so he can try "just a few more casts". 10 minutes later and disheartened after no strikes Chester comes to the realization that he is likely to remain Chester version 1.7 until the end of the year. As the cheapest of all consolations, he ended up being the last one on the water.

As we pile in the vehicles to head off for lunch, the temperature is an astonishing 57 and the wind is so calm that the reservoir looks like glass. The caravan quickly departs Lon Hagler and heads off to Perkins in Longmont. Al is in the lead and as we arrive in the parking lot Al asks "Where's Augie? He was right behind us". We figured he took a short detour up to the Frying Pan River to check conditions before he pulled in for our post fishing lunch.

As we have lunch Augie and Al recount their day on the water. Augie used a small, silver Super Duper to land his first fish, and a medium sized Bronze Super Duper to land his second. Al used large silver Super Duper to land his first fish, and then a medium bronze Super Duper to land his second and third.

To finish off lunch we each had a slice of pie to celebrate our last fishing trip of the year (or not) and another great outing. Augie had a slice of French Silk pie. Al was served up Banana Cream pie while Chester settled on Coconut Cream pie. How could we go wrong? Free pie Wednesday and all is well until we try to figure out the bill. Al uses a heretofore unknown secret calculation algorithm that has been developed by IBM running the "Big Blue" super computer over the past decade. After 20 minutes of muffled differential equations and shuffling bills of various denominations back and forth across the table Al announces that he has "done the math" and he has exactly the right amount. We head up to the cashier and after the transaction Al gives Chester and Augie each 25 cents and then pockets a small remainder. This is known as post processing adjustments.

Again it was a super BAS expedition guys. We didn't kill 'em, but we didn't come home empty handed either. No one ended up at the infirmary with an embedded hook and we all ended the day with the same number of limbs that we started with. And congratulations are in order for Al for his 2.0 upgrade. We applaud Al's determination and angling skills.

Mike, we are so sorry to have missed you on this trip. We were hoping that you could break away from your recording schedule to join us as we are pretty sure this was the last trip of the season (or not) and it would have been great to share it with you.

BTW - This coming Sunday looks pretty good on the Joe Wright. 16 degrees F with winds gusts of 21 mph with only a slight chance of snow.

*We will only know for sure what our last trip was for 2011 on January 1st. After all, there is still a month left as of the writing of this report.

Chester

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