I am dusting off the toon and making a maiden voyage Saturday as long as the water holds open. Scouting today produced a few good candidates for first stillwater of the year! With more 50+ degree weather tomorrow I do not see anything closing up. I actually think it will open a bit more.

Anyone else planning on floating some unlidded stillwater nirvana?

Saturday ended up being some howling bad wind here. 50 mph gusts turned up the chop pretty heavy on the stillwaters. I went out there to see if it was as bad as I thought it would be and it was pretty ugly. I threw some casts from shore for about an hour and a half but no takers. I was mostly trying to stay upright with the wind attempting to dunk me in the lake.

Sunday also was a wind storm up until about 1pm. I was sitting at the lake watching antelope and golden eagles and messing with my camera and binoculars waiting for the wind to die down. It finally lower to a white cap level that I could live with and I launched! First 'tooning of the year!

I threw all sorts of flies through the next three hours but never had so much as a bump. Well, it didn't matter. I was satisfied to be floating stillwater on March 5th.... this lake shouldn't open up for another 3 weeks in a normal year. Just the feeling of working a bugger over weedbeds made everything seem right in the world.

As the day faded into evening I decided to pack it up and head home. All equipment performed perfectly, even though I came very close to losing my anchor (initially I did not tie it off... good things to work out on the first trip).