Fly Fishing Was Hot Before Lakes Warmed

The storms and record low temperatures of June cracked a window of opportunity for the region’s fly fishers who fish still waters.

The relatively few who fished selective fishery and fly fishing-only lakes just before water temperatures soared under late June’s hot, sunny skies found trout gobbling chironomids, damselflies and mayflies.

Fishing was great before 85-degree temperatures warmed the lakes. It’s likely to be tough much of the rest of the summer.

When Clay Findlay and I arrived at Bayley Lake last Thursday morning, the surface water temperature was only 59 degrees, several degrees less than normal for late June. The rainbow and brook trout, some 16 to 21 inches long, were gorging themselves on chironomid pupae.

Findlay anchored in 10 feet of water, lowered a No. 12 black Swannundaze bead head chironomid and started catching brookies and rainbows.

He hooked and released brookies to 17 inches and rainbows to 20 inches. Every time I looked his way he was fighting a fish. His score for the day, a day he’ll remember for a long time, was at least 15. My score was much lower.

We arrived at Dry Falls Lake about 9 the next morning. Clifford Slaton and his wife, Dixie, had just launched their small boat and were headed for the big, shallow bay. Slaton hoped to repeat what he experienced two days earlier.

The fishing that day, he told us, was sensational. He fished the bay and caught so many big rainbows on an adult damselfly pattern that he lost track of the number he hooked.

The trout were sipping damselfly nymphs in the bay when we started fishing. None of us had patterns light enough to remain near the surface while we stripped slowly.

Damselfly nymphs wiggle their bodies back and forth so vigorously they appear to be swimming fast. In reality, they move forward very slowly and it’s necessary for a fly fisher to move his or her pattern extremely slowly to deceive the fish.

When we stripped slowly, our patterns dropped into the weeds, 12 to 16 inches under the surface.

Findlay and I moved to deep water. He spotted fish on his sonar at 17 feet and decided to fish with chironomids there. I anchored in 10 feet of water and started fishing a No. 14 black bead head Swannundaze chironomid.

Almost immediately, I hooked a big rainbow. A few minutes later I hooked another.

For the next couple of hours, I had take after take on the chironomid. The fish under Findlay’s Water Otter had lockjaw, so he moved to the shoreline and hooking rainbows on an adult version of the damselfly.

The trout stopped eating chironomids soon after 1:30 p.m. I fished a while longer and then tied on a dry damselfly pattern and joined Findlay.

“The fish won’t take a sitting damsel,” he said. “You’ve got to put your fly on a rise within a couple of seconds after the fish has risen. Then you’ve got a good chance to take the fish.”

I fished a dry damsel for a while and then, thinking the rainbows in the big, shallow bay would be taking adult damsels, I rowed my Otter back to the bay.

Slaton and his wife had left. The water temperature was 78 degrees and all the trout had moved to deep water. My day was over.

Findlay and I soon were on our way home.

When we got home, my friend, Al Stier, called to report that he and a couple of friends had had excellent fishing Friday at McDowell Lake, a fly fishing-only, catch-and-release lake on the Little Pend Oreille Wildlife Refuge. They fished damselfly nymphs and chironomid pupa patterns to take 10- to 18-inch rainbows.

Most of us still will go to the lakes we fish regularly, but we’re under no illusions that we’ll have the kind of fishing we experienced when most of the region’s residents were hoping the skies would clear and the temperatures rise to summertime levels.

Some of us will fish British Columbia’s specially managed lakes for the hard-fighting, high-jumping Girard rainbows.

Many of us, however, will fish the region’s streams. Still to come is good fishing along the St. Joe, Lochsa and Selway rivers in North Idaho; Idaho’s fabulous Henry’s Fork; the Missoula area’s Clark Fork and Bitterroot rivers; and Rock Creek and the wonderful Missouri River.

So much good fishing and so little time before snow flies again.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fenton Roskelley The Spokesman-Review