Headed back to Amber in order to lick my wounds and reestablish a false sense of fishing mastery after yesterday's mediocre trip to Coffeepot! Lots of folks out for a Monday, probably 15 or so before I left. I finally got a surface water temp reading of 40 degrees. Air temp about 50. Started at 10:00 with my usual bloodworm pattern in 6-7 foot of water. Managed only 3 solid takes, each of which yielded a landed fish, in first 1 1/2 hours, pretty slow for Amber. Real slow for other folks also, whether trolling or dunking worms/chironimids. About noon or so a hatch started coming off so I switched to a #18 zebra midge.....should have done this earlier. The number of takes then skyrocketed!! Managed another dozen fish landed with several more missed/lost in the next 1 1/2 hours. Turned out to be a good outing, not spectacular by virtue of sheer numbers, but still good. 6 or so fished were 17-20" with the largest being 22". 2 of the big ones were cutthroat, 18" and 19" respectively, largest cutts I've caught at Amber. Keep it small until the water warms more.

---