This year it feels like I’m sneaking fewer chances to fish the local water, so every good day feels like stolen treasure. August is a roll of the dice—if the heat doesn’t roast you, the wind will try to fling you into Fresno. To top it off, I actually got kicked off the dam today as I was leaving. Haven’t had that honor in a while. Odd thing too—only three boats on the lake. I guess the rangers needed someone to hassle.

Driving in, I couldn’t help but stare at the Jurassic-sized windmills sprouting up around Dinosaur Point. They’re ten times bigger than before and now form a ring of death around the launch ramp. Honestly, local birds don’t stand a chance—one wrong move and it’s like flying into a giant Cuisinart. Meanwhile, the rangers continue their nonsensical mussel inspections—still making us quarantine eight days from the forebay even though there’s never been a mussel in the lake. Bravo, government. Building bird blenders, inventing carbon-positive “green” energy, and tossing me off the dam for good measure. Hard at work!

Wind forecasts and Solonar said it would be a stellar day, and they weren’t wrong. From 11–2 the wind laid down, algae mats stacked thick along the dam, and under them my Livescope lit up like a Vegas casino with shad and stripers. Even pulled a four-pound largemouth out of the mess. The shad come for the microorganisms as do the baitfish, the stripers come for the baitfish and the occasional small american shad, and I come for the stripers. It’s basically a buffet line under there. By August, the summer heat bakes the surface of the lake and mats of algae bloom across the lake and especially in the Bay of Pigs. What looks like a lifeless green blanket from above is actually a magnet for fish below. The algae mats create shade, keeping the water cooler, and as the living algae photosynthesize, they pump oxygen into the water—at least for a while. That surge of oxygen, combined with the cover, draws baitfish and American shad, which graze on the microorganisms that thrive in and around the algae. Predators soon follow, knowing the mats hide both food and cooler water. It’s a seasonal cycle—productive at first, until the mats start to die, decomposition robs oxygen, and the life under the green turns still. But for a window in August, the algae mats make the lake come alive in their own way. n It seems the schools of stri[ers like to swim up and down the rocks of the dam close to the shoreline looking for a meal.

Started the day with shrimp flies and autopsied my first 20-incher (CSI: San Luis). No shrimp today, just a couple tiny smelt. Bigger, brighter patterns worked better than the shrimp today. Frank’s Fuzzy—tied entirely out of Ice Dub—was like an “Eat Me” neon sign. Worked the dam run five times and caught fish steadily. Switched to my 7-wt Bad Ass Glass with a click reel just for kicks. Glass rods are like fishing with a rubber band—every strike feels mushy, every hook set feels like arm-wrestling Jell-O. But man, it’s fun. Ended with 26 fish, all 18 inches or better. Told myself I’d quit at 30, but at 2:00 the wind came back with whitecaps, and right on cue a lady in a pickup started yelling at me from the dam. I waved like a polite criminal and motored off.

Of course, no good day comes without sacrifices to the fishing gods. The rubber track on my trolling motor snapped—no clue what it does, but duct tape seemed to convince it to keep working. My tie-off rope also managed to loop itself into the prop and got decapitated. Note to self: Rope should be shorter than boat.

Bonus comedy: tested my waders at the ramp and found two leaks—both conveniently around my nipples. Pretty sure it wasn’t my nipples that punctured them, though I have been parking scissors there lately. Meanwhile, I test-casted Rio Skagit Scout lines—everyone raves about them. On my 12’ 7-wt, the 480 grain felt better than the 510. The heavier line just beat the rod into submission. Ordering a 440 next—because nothing says sanity like buying lines in 20-grain increments. Just maybe lighter is better.

Wrapped up by experimenting with my mutant salmon flies—props, jigs, surface churners. Glad I got a test run before heading to Sapsuk in a couple weeks. Steph texted from Anchorage that his Coho trip got blown out by weather and he was returning. What a bummer. Told him as long as you can get there, the fish will be waiting. Hopefully my luck holds.