fishinstudin-

First off congrats on your choice of girlfriend for letting you fish on your visit. Though it could be a trick to reel YOU in... (oops, did I say that out loud?)

You've got great advice so far as far as flies and SLOW retrieve.

Try Googling the name of the lake with something like " name map", " name topo" or "name contour" to see if there is anything out there with a map showing drop offs, inflow/outflows, deep holes, humps etc that you could fish from shore, tube or boat (if they have rentals.) A back up would be checking Google Earth to see if you can get a satellite shot, sometimes contours are visible, (if you see someone holding up a big fish mark that spot...!)

If you have a sink tip you may want to bring that too. I've had a lot of luck for early season trout using a 10 foot sink tip, short leader and a big black honking flies like Zonkers, Black Marabou Muddlers, and Black Marabou Streamers, size 4 for big trout. (Probably stocked breeders).

This was fishing from an embankment into a hole 4-15 feet deep near an outflow fishing into the lake where the water was a small current feeding into the lip of a dam. I'd cast out and count missippis or hippopotomi until I started catching fish and figured out deep they were holding, or started snagging bottom and adjusting to fish shallower. I use unweighted flies with a sink tip, and a short leader. This keeps the fly down, but helps to prevent snags since it rides above the fly line's sink tip. If I was using a floating line, I use a longer 7-9 foot leader with weighted flies to get deeper. I've had best luck with big fish in 4-10 deep water using the bigger streamers with a long wait to let the fly sink, then very short and very quick strip, long pause, quick short strip, long pause type of retrieve. It seems to trigger a very aggresive, reaction type of strike. Some of the early season stockers I've killed have had stones in their bellies, so I'm not sure they had figured out the finer points of the food web yet.

I also use nymphs and soft hackles too, with a very slow retrieve and add a twitch or too from time time to to get some attention if that isn't working, but I've had better luck on the black streamers for early season stockers for some reason. If the water was shallow I'd use a floater and try lightly weighted black streamers in size 12 or 10 first, than switch to nymphs like a PT in 14 or a 14 softhackle. I'd also want to bring some dry flies like an Early Black Stone for early season and some Parachute Adams or BWO's for the lake (hackled for moving water) in the off chance that there was a hatch going on and the fish were on them. (And if I wasn'nt catching anything, I'd rather not catch them on dry flies...)

Good luck.

Peregrines