Antelope Lake sits up in the Plumas County high country, a reservoir ringed by pine and meadow where the rainbows and browns put on weight through the short mountain summer. It's stillwater fishing of the patient kind — you read the wind before you read anything else, watch where the chop lays a foam line, and trust that the trout are working the drop-offs and weed margins even when the surface tells you nothing. There are some properly good browns in here for the angler willing to wait them out. The lake fishes best in the cool shoulders of the season; high summer can warm the shallows and push fish deep and sulky. Damsels, chironomids and the odd Callibaetis hatch carry the food chain, and a slow figure-of-eight over the right shelf earns more than frantic stripping.

• Reservoir
• Mixed