Winter lake fishing

this weekend has a boy's road/fishin trip penned in. Me, Al, Brian, Andre and Milo are going to dominate the winter spawning lake trout at Rotorua... which normally means:

1. Turn up feeling full of expectation about what's going to unfold this evening
2. Ignore biting wind, bitter frost and the fact that you're wrapped up like the Michelin man
3. Carefully tie knots while you still have feeling in your fingers
4. Cast gently into the inky blackness while marvelling at (a) the beautiful stars (means frost is gonna be super-heavy), or (b) adjusting your angles to ensure that the wind doesn't whip a hook into your back/side/waders/head/other angler
5. Cast again and again and again
6. Change fly - you never know, it may help! Surely the hoards of fish can see your fly, so why aren't they gobbling it down?
7. Cast/retrieve/cast/retrieve... tie on new leader, somehow wind knots have got in the old one
8. Strike at slight nibble, all the while knowing it was a koura
9. cast/retrieve
10. stamp feet to get some feeling back
11. Look at loose line you've just stamped on. Got any nicks?
12. New leader. and man, it's only 9pm. 3 hours to endure
13. Ignore whooping from lucky asshole next to you, hope his 11lb'er escapes. He can't fish, its all luck.
14. Torch running low
15. Change fly.
16. Hook swan.
17. Play swan
18. gently release swan in flurry of activity. Consider getting them on the fish schedule, man can they fight
19. It's 9.15, man that last 15 minutes flew by!
20. Stop saying 'just one more cast'
21. Some random jingle is stuck in your head
22. -- unfortunately it's a chick song from the early '90s
23. Hook freshwater mussel. Man they can't fight
24. ....

The most I ever caught in an evening lake shore fishing was 3, and they were comparative tiddlers at 3-6lb. Plenty of times I caught zilch, its just not a style of angling that I came close to mastering. I well remember casting for 9 hours in a biting southerly and finally landing a slab - to me it was a trophy, showing that perseverance can pay off! That fishing memory is forever burned into my psyche. It hurt bad.

Anyway, I rolled a few booby flies off the vice last night, Milo says they are what's needed....

Juicy morsels, hope the fish like them.