I was just 6 years old when my folks decided that it would be nice to have a place where we could get away on the weekends. We spent a few weekends investigating several places before they settled on a small cabin on Blue Lake, which was a couple hours' drive from our house in the city. Blue Lake was a picturesque little jewel of a lake set among the mixed hardwoods and pine forests in northern Minnesota.

The April 2011 issue of Salmon Trout Steelheader, a long-time sponsor here has some really neat features. If you don't read it you are missing out on some really good tips. Yes, it is not specifically intended for fly fishers BUT it always has some articles which do apply to us. The last article, Just One More Cast is all about a 200 Fish Flat Fish. Now wait, yes I do know a Flat Fish in not a fly. 

It was one of those days off that you don't want to have. I had a good friend that needed some help. One thing lead to another and I found myself having about an hour to be out on the water.

I've been waiting all winter to get out and do some serious fly fishing but it looks like I'm going to have to wait a bit longer. With the snow pack at record levels in just about every drainage in all of the states from Colorado to Montana it may well be late summer before many of the major trout streams are approachable.

First off let me clarify something in my defense meager though it may be. The Creek was in flood, really high, and quite menacing actually. There was talk of it overflowing its banks causing flooding in its lower reaches near where it flows into the lake. This fact is what caused us to eschew our regular camping spot situated down in the steep valley where the little creek has carved its way through solid rock over the millennia.

I did not notice him at first sitting there on the bank half hidden by the sweet ferns and alders. He was a young man, certainly not more than in his late teens. I thought it curious that his equipment looked much older. He wore canvas waders and over his shoulder was a wicker creel. His rod was bamboo and much longer than I was accustomed to seeing. He wore a broad brimmed hat and the hat band was festooned with flies, but the patterns were not ones with which I was familiar.

The Ruby is one of my favorite low-water midge patterns. It's a great search pattern in smaller pocket water and around boulder fields, where the current isn't so much that additional weight is needed. I like to fish it fairly tight-lined and actually pull it through and around boulders, along shelves and through the heads of smaller riffles and plunge pools. 

Stepping out of the truck on the smallish forest service road bridge, I walked to the edge and peered upstream into a Jurassic Park type of setting. It had been a 3 hour drive around the south end of the Olympic peninsula and back up the west coast to a stream I had only received verbal directions to, but after careful scrutiny of my gazetteer and USFS map I believed that I had in fact found it. The small stream was approximately 10feet in width at the point where it crossed the road.