Damsel Madness at Davis Lake (Winthrop)

Davis Lake north of Winthrop

The town of Winthrop is one of my favorite places in all of Washington. Casey and I had a great time there last year. And also, because of our association with the PNCC, our church is good friends with Pastor Steve, Shannon and the kids at the Methow Valley United Methodist Church. As I was in the area for this trip, I stopped in at their church and enjoyed the service, sitting with Shannon and Bob. I stuck around for treats afterwards, but by noon the fish were calling and I had to say goodbye.

I'd been wanting to get back to Davis Lake ever since Casey and I had visited there last year and had seen all those big fish on the fish finder. As I approached the lake in the mid-afternoon I was greeted by swarms and swarms of damsel flies.

Image Copyright Brian Robert Marshall. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.

Remember how my pontoon boat bladders had died on the ill-fated Dry Falls trip the previous weekend? I had since purchased (from Craigslist) an entire, still-new-in-the-box, pontoon boat and replaced my old pontoons with the new ones. I put together the resulting Frankenstein boat and fished shirtless and in sandals for four hours. I hooked fish after fish in every part of the lake at every depth.

Carey Bugger, tied for this trip

The fish were rising everywhere to the swarming damsels all day long. I observed something interesting. There were clouds of blue damsels hovering over the water. Every now and then a gray damsel would fall to the water and the blues would appear to "attack" it. I wonder if the gray was the female and the blues were the male. I can't say if that's true but the trout seemed to love the situation and would rise up and grab several damsels at once. Of the fish I caught, the largest was perhaps 14". Not a hog but big enough to make for a fun afternoon

The drive home was a long one - just under 4 hours, down through Pateros, Wenatchee, Cashmere and south to Cle Elum and then home. 650 miles in three days. Whew!