Jeff and I weren't on the water until 1:30pm today. There is a learning curve - but read on to shorten it for yourselves. The main thing is that we got skunked! I guess 1 trip just isn't enough to figure out such a large body of water!

I tried full sinking lines with a silver bead-head black woolly bugger, and added a red midge larvae as a dropper. I fished this rig for about 3 hours with not even a bump. Jeff fished a brown woolly bugger without success. I switched to a floating line and a baitfish imitation but again, no dice.

I will say that the place is beyond gorgeous though. Kicking around on a huge lake in a deep canyon, cacti growing right down to the edge of the lake, on a crisp January sky, and about a half moon creeping up over the SE ridge made it about more than catching fish. We nearly had the place to ourselves too.

The learning curve involves not only the fishing. It turns out that you need a Tonto National Forest Pass to park where we fished, which was Three Mile Canyon Recreation Site, just 3 miles below Roosevelt Dam on Arizona Route 188. Jeff thought about it about a mile before we got there, so we went on down to the Apache Lake Marina to buy the pass. That's about a 20 mile diversion. Day passes and annual passes are available at various outlets, but if you're going just for the day, I suggest getting the pass on-line at:

www.myscenicdrives.com/store/item/forest-passes/tonto

The day pass costs $8 and the annual pass costs $60. You can do the math.