Cool off with a little fishing

With scorchingly high temperatures in May, there is only one place to be: on one of our many beautiful lakes with a fishing rod in hand.

I have some friends who love to simply sit by a lake or a babbling brook and read a book. But my nature is to be more active, so why not try to outwit a fish?

My recent fishing jaunts have been in the Thompson Lakes area. Fishing has been really good. My spring routine is to troll near shore with leaded core line. I've been going down two to four colors, which puts my lure down to a 15- to 20-foot depth.

I use a variety of small pieces of hardware such as triple teasers or Luhr Jensen lures. Some have small spinners, but most are just a curved piece of metal that flutters and wobbles like an injured minnow.

My favorite color is chartreuse with a touch of red somewhere on the lure. Red on a lure signals a bleeding, injured baitfish, which translates into an easy meal for the predator fish.

Red hooks, which are supposed to indicate bleeding fish, have been the rage of the fishing-lure industry during the past couple of years.

I don't know if you really catch more fish with red hooks, but the concept seems logical.

Big rainbow trout like to cruise the shorelines during spring, so that's why I like to troll closer to shore than I normally do later in the summer.

The fishing setup I just described has produced good catches of rainbow and kokanee for me during the last couple of weeks.

Our hot weather has accelerated the snow melt, so most of our streams will be high and will have colored water this weekend, making stream fishing difficult. If you want to fish a stream, find a stream that originates from a lake.

Lakes act as settling basins for snow-melt silt, so the stream flowing out of the lake will generally be flowing clear.

Speaking of fishing, have you recently tried to launch your boat on some of our local lakes such as Lake Blaine which has some monster kokanee? If you find a decent public access on Lake Blaine, please let me know.

Many of our local fishing waters, both lakes and streams, have no or inadequate public access. In the past, farmers and timber companies permitted public use of their land for access.

But with the rapid subdivision and development of our wildlands, much of that traditional access is disappearing.

Recently Fish, Wildlife and Parks has committed to buying a decent boat and lake access site on Echo Lake from the Montana Department of Natural Resources.

That purchase will cost $500,000. Funding will come from the dollar each of us pay when we buy a Montana fishing license.

The bad news is this small land purchase will use up 100 percent of all statewide fishing access site money for the next two years

With so much of Montana's expanding economy tied to public water, public land and open spaces, Fish, Wildlife and Parks needs to have substantially more money for purchasing access to our lakes, streams and public lands.

During the last legislative session, Rep. Bill Jones, R-Bigfork, sponsored legislation to increase funding for public access. Unfortunately that legislation didn't pass.

As primary election day approaches, ask the candidates about their support for public access to our public lands and waters. Our Flathead outdoor lifestyle depends on good public access.