In the last article it was made crudely apparent by me that stillwater
fish are able to take their “sweet-ass time” to evaluate
the pattern and the presentation that you put on the fly. This is
true. However, since we know that trout in lakes have more time
to scrutinize patterns than their river brethren, our patterns need
more to keep the trout’s attention. Lake flies can be broken
down into 2 groups: Exact imitations
and Impressionistic
Patterns.
Exact
imitations
Chironomidae: :
flies
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Some insects do not emerge rapidly from the lake bottom to the
surface. Foremost in my mind are the class of huge insect order
of Dipthera (flies with 2 wings). These are the chironomids and
midges. This is all fly fishing jargon, because they’re
all chironomids, we just call flies that are smaller than a hook
size of 16 midges. Anyway, these guys live on bottom of the lake
and often in mud flats, though they can be found anywhere. They
start out as a little worm (larvae) that spastically twitches
jerks and really doesn’t make much forward progress. When
the time is right, the pupal form of this insect emerges from
the larvae, and it fills with gas. It then moves straight up through
the water column - Not at an angle. It also progresses very slowly
through the water column. As a fly fisher, our best bet is to
hang the chironomid under a strike indicator. If we have a little
bit of breeze over the water, the chironomid will bounce up and
down with each ripple, and will give the pattern a life-like action.
This is because your strike indicator is keeping your chironomid
at a specific depth that you’ve measured the fish to likely
be at. Your patterns also need to be very specific to match the
originals. I always use beadheads on my chironomids because I
don’t like waiting the extra 30 seconds for my fly to get
down to its desired depth. You will want to add white gills (white
antron or ostrich herl) and your patterns need to be slim, just
like real chironomids. I’ve heard guys talk about trolling
chironomids around a lake or retrieving them in fast 3-4”
strips with success, but in my opinion, that was just plain dumb
luck that they caught a fish fishing like that. Chironomids don’t
act like that and if we’re fly fishers, we should probably
do what the insect does if we want to stand a fair chance at catching
fish.
Some Leeches: flies
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Everyone fishes leech patterns, but few really fish them like
a leech. Leeches are almost as slow as chironomid larvae, and
the majority of their activity comes at night. If you really want
to fish a leech like a leech, you must fish it slow and on the
bottom with frequent pauses and stops. I learned to fish leeches
from the Canadians up in B.C., who take their lake fishing much
more serious than we do in the U.S. Most leech patterns will use
mohair. Many more will use marabou. These patterns are tied very
sparse and the final product will be very simple and will ultimately
have a “wispy” look to it. I have seen the colors
of leeches run the gamut but here are some ideas.
1) Western Washington
a) Black, olive, brown, or any combination of these colors.
It is often necessary to add a piece of “Flash”
to attract the trout’s attention. Some like to add a small
red bead at the head of the fly, while others will add some
kind of sparkle dubbing in the body. Almost all flies will have
a marabou tail of some sort to give the fly the exact undulating
effect that real leeches have. The major thing to incorporate
into your patterns is the color of the Western Washington lake
bottoms: muddy brown and dark olive. Note: Do not get carried
away with sparkle products; a little sparkle goes a long way.
2) Eastern Washington
Eastern Washington can have all the above, but specifically,
Eastern Washington lakes have a different color spectrum on
its lake bottoms. Due to the alkaline nature of many Eastern
Washington soils, many Eastern Washington lakes have marl shoals.
The color of the aquatic vegetation on the lake bottoms are
often an olive to lime-green color and their insects will also
adapt to the same coloring. Thus, leeches in lighter spectrums
of olive and even tan/beige will be productive. I remember once
going through the stomach contents of a Columbia Basin bluegill
and finding a tan leech with maroon mottling. Unlike Western
Washington, in Eastern Washington you get more for your money
with sparkle products. The best product that I’ve found
is sparkle chenille in light olive. I put a marabou tail in
a similar shade of olive and add 3 pieces of holographic flash
into the tail. This holographic flash is so damn obnoxious (read
really flashy) that it is best to only extend it half way down
the tail. In summary, olive holographic flash produces better
than average results when you don’t get carried away with
incorporating too much of this stuff into your ties.
Scuds and Snails:
flies
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Fishing snails in lakes is a tough bet. If you think the previously
mentioned insects were slow, you won’t believe the snail.
For fly-fishing purposes, just think that snails don’t move
at all. If you fish them, you fish them under a strike indicator
until you’re bored to tears and can’t take in any
longer. You will see them in the stomach contents of trout, but
I’d have to say that they’re in the class of daphnia;
something that trout eat that you can’t produce at the tying
bench, or would want to.
Scuds on the other hand will likely get you in to some trout.
From what I can tell, scuds have no atmospheric air requirement
and can be found on the bottom of any lake that has rather alkaline
soils. To determine if a lake is alkaline, look above the water
line for a high water mark. If the high water mark looks really
or kind of chalky white, the lake is has alkaline qualities. If
you watch scuds, they kind of twitch, freak-out, and jump from
one limb of aquatic growth to another. They do not swim for 50
yards or whatever distance you were planning to troll them across
the lake. I am not a great scud fisherman, but the guys I know
that do well calculate the depth they need to get them to the
weed-tops and add a strike indicator to keep them there. They
then use occasional 1-3” strips and pauses to move their
scud towards them. With the exception of 3 lakes that I know of,
Western Washington generally does not have scuds. Eastern Washington
has plenty of scuds but they are not of the Gammarus type (the
larger type found in the British Columbia Interior Lakes), but
of the Hyalella variety. These scuds usually don’t exceed
a size 16 in hook size. The exception would be in the upper Okanogan
area, where Gammarus scuds exist. Wherever scuds exist, so do
healthy trout. So, because a healthy trout provides the kind of
aggressive fight that we look for, I guess its in all of our best
interest to learn to fish scuds.
Impressionistic
patterns
If you like to strip your flies, impressionistic patterns are
the way to go. Certain insects have movement in the lake that
require you to strip your patterns. In this next section were
going to discuss the stillwater insects that make lateral progress
through the water. Imitate their actions and you’ll do fine.
Trout are opportunists, so you’re not dealing with too difficult
of a crowd. Do your own thing and you will turn the fish off,
and you will have a crappy day on the water.
Damselfly Nymphs:
flies
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These are part of the faster group of bugs that move around in
the lakes. Beginning in late April (generally) damselflies begin
their movement to the shoreline where they climb up on cattails
and split their nymphal shucks and emerge into adults. (Its pretty
amazing because they have telescoping bodies and the adult is
much larger than the nymph, which is unusual in the insect world.
Usually the bugs get smaller with each passing metamorphosis of
maturity). In places there aren’t cattails, they will climb
up on rocks or rock walls and hatch. The key is that they always
move from the center of the lake, or wherever they had been living
as a nymph, and move to the margins of the lake. So, if you want
more fish on a damselfly hatch, you should cast out into the lake
and strip into the shore. When these guys are ready to migrate
to the shore they don’t mess around: 2-3” strips with
occasional pauses will work well. They travel in all parts of
the water column, so you can’t mess this one up. You’ll
probably do a little better closer to the bottom (since they emerge
from the bottom), but it really doesn’t really matter that
much.
Since these guys are moving fast (fast for lakes, at least) you
DON’T want to have a tightly tied fancy plastic looking
beautiful fly shop creation complete with a raffia body and burnt
monofilament eyes. You want something the breathes and moves,
just like the damselfly that is spastically jerking and kicking
its way to shore. Flies that incorporate moving parts are always
key. I like to put chain-eyes or a bead-head on the front of the
fly. That will make it drop and rise. Also, remember a damsel
nymph has a wider head than its body. The body must taper quickly
from the head. The tail should be made of 5 to 6 strands of marabou.
Add more, and the tail will be thicker than the head, which turns
fish off, because it doesn’t look like a damselfly. In Western
Washington, because the lakes are a muddy brown color, your damselflies
are going to be a dark olive to dark brown color to match the
mud. In Eastern Washington, lighter shades of olive and sometimes
lime shades will do the trick. I understand that in Pend Oreille,
Stevens, and Ferry Counties, beige and light brown damsels are
effective in addition to the olive and lime tones.
Dragonfly Nymphs:
flies
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Dragonflies offer a real meal for the trout. However, you need
to fish them effectively for trout to actually believe that they’re
Dragonflies. Dragonfly nymphs have a really weird swimming action.
They are always near or on the bottom, but they shoot off the
bottom at an angle, in a rocket like fashion. As soon as they
stop swimming, the weight of their bodies causes them to immediately
sink. So, you will fish a weighted fly, and count your fly down
to the bottom, and then make three 3-4” strips and then
pause for 2-3 seconds as your fly heads down to bottom. Then repeat
this process.
You would think with the pausing and waiting you do (between
strips) with this retrieve that you would do okay with a fancy
looking woven, or realistic looking damselfly. In my experience,
I have found that a fly that is very weighted, has lots of marabou,
hen hackle palmered through it (read wooleybugger) seems to do
much better that a realistic looking fly. This point is up to
debate, and you will have to determine what you think is more
effective. There really is not authoritative answer to this one.
All-Around Attractors:
flies
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Like I said before, trout are opportunists. The number one optimist
is the cutthroat. Cutthroats are suckers for red--but in proportion.
When fishing a lahontan lake or a Western Washington cutthroat
bog, I don’t get too technical with my ties. I tie an olive
bodied and dark olive hackled wet-fly pattern with a red butt
made of red aftershaft or any other crappy fluffy feathers you
can find on the stem of a red-dyed feather. I bunch them on the
tail so that aftershaft butt flutters just a little. My red butt
probably does not exceed 4 mm in length. This seems to specifically
work for cutthroat. I’ve not had much luck with other species
of trout with the “red-butt” wet flies.
When it comes to Rainbow trout, Brookies, and Browns other patterns
are necessary. For instance, the wooleybugger. Who can dispute
the effectiveness of the wooleybugger? It’s quite possibly
the best pattern of all time. Palmering soft hen hackle (read
cheap low grade hackle) makes the fly breathe when you strip it.
The marabou tail undulates all-the-while creating a lively fly
pattern that darts or undulates, depending on how you strip it.
Add some flash to the tail or a fancy sparkle chenille on the
body and who knows what will happen. An additional improvement
in attractor flies is the Carey Special, which uses pheasant rump
as a collar to the fly. When you strip the fly, the collar pulls
against the body of the fly and then “pops” back up
in between strips. Another substitute for the collar is Hungarian
partridge. It too, has the same qualities as pheasant rump, but
the barbules are not nearly as long, so it works well on fly sizes
10 and smaller. This is a great addition to your smaller streamer
patterns (read damselflies). If a stillwater trout is going to
follow your fly, it is going to follow it for a while. He’s
got all the time in the world, right? Adding additional features
like marabou, flash, pheasant rump, or Hungarian partridge is
going to add just a bit more motion and liveliness that is going
to keep its attention with your fly instead of abandoning it.
Bunny Leaches:
flies
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What can I say? The bunny leach combined with a beadhead is deadly
for trout. My #1 night fishing pattern (Steve Probasco’s
Night Leech) is a variation of this pattern. If you use crosscut
bunny strips, you can wrap it around your hook and you end up
with something that looks like a rabbit’s foot lucky charm.
Or you can tie it right down the hook with a standard-cut “zonker
strip” which gives it a mohawk which is just as effective.
Don’t ask me why, but large browns and rainbows are big
fans of flies incorporating bunny strips. If you’re really
savvy, you skip the cross cut rabbit strip and tie your bunny
hairs into a dubbing brush (a special device is needed for this)
and your pattern will immediately sink to the bottom (The skin
in rabbits allows some buoyancy, which slows their departure.
By using a dubbing brush you take the rabbit skin out of the equation).
Water Boatman and Back-Swimmers:
flies
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What’s the difference? Not much. When looking at the two
you will find that the Back-Swimmers are football shaped and when
they swim, they swim upside-down. The Water Boatman are a little
more compact and generally have about the same silhouette as an
apple. Both have “oar-like” legs that extend from
the middle of their body. The “oars” are about twice
as wide as the body, but a fly-tier can get away with tying them
longer. Keep this thought in mind, because if you tie them to
their appropriate proportions, the “oars” will be
rigid, and the fly will not swim and will look fake. Oh, and Back-Swimmers
will bite you and Water Boatman will not!
Stillwater specialists (those that spend more time on the lake
than the river) claim that this really is a “seasonal hatch,”
with only special attention brought to the “Water Boatman
fall.” What does all that mean? It means that the bugs actually
get out of the lake and mate and fly around. They can do this
in the spring, but most anglers see this event in the fall. They
then plunge themselves into the water in an effort to break though
the surface of the water. This event is the Water Boatman “fall.”
Apparently, the whole scene has the effect that it is raining
on a sunny day. Eastern Washington lakes have large quantities
of these insects in their waters and I have found mashed boatman
in the stomach contents of Columbia Basin trout throughout the
year, which coincides with the fact that have had some success
with this pattern outside of the typical spring and fall “Water
Boatman fall” event. There is a reason for this (this is
going to be kind of long-winded, so bear with me on my explanation).
I feel that each trout is an opportunist, so that doesn’t
mean that every trout in the entire lake is keying into the same
hatch. Water Boatmen and Backswimmers breathe atmospheric air,
and have to continually come up to the surface to get a bubble
of atmospheric air, which the hold against their chest with their
“non-oar” legs. Because their air supply is limited,
you don’t usually find these bugs in water deeper than 10.’
If a trout is up on the shoal, they will run into these bugs and
they may become part of their regular diet. The trout that is
spending its time in a deeper part of the lake will have different
food sources and different priorities. Inspections of the stomach
contents of fish I have “bonked” prove this. Moral
of the story: Don’t be afraid to try this pattern in the
shallows any time of the year.
These bugs are also the most fun to fish. They are the speed
demons of the lake and their swimming motion can best be described
as scampering. Who knows which direction they’re heading
or where they’re going? I seriously doubt that they really
know where they’re going. Put these patterns on a clear
intermediate line, ghost tip, or a floating line and a long leader
and strip them continuously in 1-3” strips with short pauses
between a series of strips. In Eastern Washington, they’re
usually in hook sizes of 10-14. This is a relatively unexplored
fishing option among fly fisherman. Be the first kid on your block
to say, “I fish with Water Boatman and Backswimmer patterns!”
Baitfish Patterns:
flies
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In most lakes other non-trout species occur. These non-trout
species successfully spawn each year and provide juvenile fish
populations in a lake. Furthermore, lakes with inlets and outlets
provide successful spawning opportunities for trout and char that
create juvenile fish populations. Regardless, if a fish is 15”
or more, its mouth is big enough to fit a juvenile fish into it.
The benefits of ingesting one juvenile fish far surpass the efforts
of multiple feedings of individual insects. One minnow will sustain
a fish’s appetite for a longer duration due to the larger
ingestion of calories per feeding. As a fly fisher, if you want
to target largest fish, baitfish patterns are your best bet. Some
say that baitfish are a very cautious bunch and wait until the
safety of dark to feed. I can’t verify this with any degree
of scientific authority, but I find that the overwhelming majority
of fish I catch on baitfish patterns occur after dark. So, I concur.
A baitfish moves very slowly until a larger fish scares it. At
that time, it panics and aimlessly darts in one direction, and
then becomes calm and moves a crawling pace again. The more that
it is chased by a predator, the more it aimlessly darts. I often
fish baitfish patterns after dark so I do not know if the fish
first identifies my baitfish pattern upon touchdown of my cast
or somewhere during the retrieving process. Regardless, when night
fishing I keep a super-rapid retrieve of 4-7” erratic strips
targeting the shorelines all-the-while. Again, because of all
the motion you’re putting on your patters when you retrieve
them, patterns that replicate the look of fish will not be productive.
Patterns made of all-black materials will silhouette the night
sky the best and should be used. I have heard it said that if
you take any pattern and look at it in the dark (with a lighter
background) the fly will appear dark. However, I find that flies
tied with black materials work best for me.
