Not about the catching ??

With forecast for a cloudy, showery day it seemed like great conditions for fishing. Donna was busy in the evening with her dress rehearsal so it meant there were no limitations if I fished a bit later in the day. Thus was good since I had to wait for the internet service guys to do their thing with the antenna before I headed out to meet Bob.I managed to get away before 11 and was at the agreed upon lake around noon. The inclement weather was no where to be found - good in one sense but not great from a fishing perspective as this lake can be difficult on sunny days. None the less it was good to get out on the water.I expected to find Bob there but also found Doug fishing not far from the launch. He had landed one and had a hit from another. All very encouraging.Unfortunately, the fishing didn't materialize as I might have imagined. Three hours without a single hit. And that included kicking all the way to the far end of the lake where I have had success in the past. Bob managed one rainbow trout before we decided to pull out and head over to lake number two to see what was happening with the brook trout.One of the things the warm weather brought out (actually millions of things) was the black flies. They were mildly annoying under the warmth of midday so I was anticipating the worst as evening approached. The access to our second lake is via a mucky, boggy trail from the parking area. The plan was to organize the gear as quickly as possible and get on the water before they know we were there. All was going according to plan until I realized I had forgot to switch to my floating line. Wasted minutes! Still it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and I was in the water without serious incident. And then they hit. It was like a massive swarm was sitting at the shore ready to attack the minute I was in the float tube. Of course there was no wind and the lake is small so it took a while to get clear of them.By comparison to our first lake, this one is tiny. With the wind at bay it was possible to talk to each other with one at either side of the lake. As it turned out, the wind wasn't the only thing quiet this day.The only evidence of fish was some smaller ones chasing bugs in the shallows. A small dry fly was enough to attract their attention and soon we were playing around with a bunch of scrappy little brook trout. Sizing any of them at eight inches would have been a stretch but they were still fun. And I count it as community service since half of them couldn't seem to time their attack quite right, missing the fly with their charge to the surface After a couple hours of this and with little evidence that there would be any activity from larger fish we decided to pack it in.If fishing is not always about the catching this was one of those days.