Paddleboard on the Fly: Report

I've spent the last three days boat camping on Lake Pend Oreille in Northern Idaho with my family.  The weather was perfect and the water was about as warm as I have ever seen it, at 73 degrees, which is unheard of in early June.  Normally the fish are working the surface in the evenings throughout early June and can be caught on dry flies.  I was a bit of a skeptic this time with the water being so warm.

Arriving at our campsite, Denver and I started noticing some fish feeding on the surface.  We didn't pay much attention to them since it was pretty sporadic.  After a while there seemed to be more fish rising, so off I went on the paddle board with my four weight in hand.  I paddled slowly towards the fish and saw a nice one right away- but it’s really hard to stop a paddleboard while trying to set the paddle down and grab your rod in a hurry.

With that shot blown, I focused my attention on another fish closer to shore.  The fish rose once, then again, then I cast near where I thought it was going to come up again.  Once my fly hit the water I saw the fish from 10 feet down swim up towards my fly and without hesitation ate it.  I was pretty excited, to say the least, to hook a fish on a dry out on lake Pend Oreille.  We managed to hook and land a few more fish that day, and a few more in the days after with a refusal from a large rainbow that will haunt me for a long time.