The Mother Lagoon. I’ve read STORIES about it for years and have always wanted to visit and fish it. It’s far from my home. 2000 miles away far. What has intrigued me most about the lagoon is it’s extremely shallow and consistently so. And it’s usually clear. It stretches on for miles and is generally only inches to 2 or 3 feet deep. Really, just the slightest of water. I’ve also read that there is one area of the lagoon that has a firm white sand bottom. This allows a fly angler to sight fish on foot.

I’ve read STORIES that you can drive on the nearby beautiful seaside beach and camp on it for free. There aren’t many places like that left. Dogs can also run off leash there. That’s also a rarity. From the beach you can hike over the sand dunes to the lagoon.

It is a coastal region so it can get windy. Clouds and storms can also make it challenging. I’ve read STORIES you can walk and search a lot and often not see any or many fish. Sometimes they are just not in the area that you’ve chosen to explore. Sometimes, however, you do find fish prowling the sand flat for food. Sometimes some good ones. Saltwater ones. Feeding in just inches in water.

Of course STORIES are often just STORIES and being 2000 miles away it is hard to know what is fact, what is magnification and what is fiction. So I contacted someone who spends more days than most on the Mother Lagoon. I described my plan. I hoped they would reply. They graciously did and said: “Your plan is good”. They even offered some angling advice.

Here at home, 2000 miles north of the Laguna, my STORY is that it has been hot. Brutally hot. It was 38c or 100f the other day when I left a local river at 4 pm. I went to two different rivers that day both bottom release flows from reservoirs and therefore fairly cold. I fished in shorts, drank close to 2.5 liters of water, waded a lot to stay cool and found some fish rising. Here are a few nice trout taken in full sun on a size 16 Pale Morning Dun dry fly, CDC wing; and another on a Klinkhammer style tie with trailing shuck (see photo).