FRESHWATER
24 June 12, 2020 VOL.39 • ISS. 13
Catch & Release Fishing!
Hook More & Bigger Fish With Flies...
Sponsored by Kiene’s Fly Shop
916-483-1222 • www.Kienesflyshop.com 9550 Micron Ave. Suite B • Sacramento, CA
Do Flies Really Work? By Cal Kellogg
Why does an angler start using flies? That question has a lot of different answers
depending on who you ask. Some folks see fly
fishing as a more challenging way to fish. Others
perceive it as a more sophisticated approach. There
are even some people out there using flies or at least
hybrid flies without even realizing it.
Don’t those hoochies your pull for trout, kokanee
and ocean salmon look a whole lot like streamers
flies? And those marabou crappie jigs sure look like
bead head Woolly Bugger flies, or do those Woolly
Buggers look a lot like crappie jigs….Hmmmm the
lines just got a little blurred for both the dyed in the wool fly
guys and the gear guys reading these words!
Here are some of the offerings I use during any given fishing
season. Live 3-pound rockfish, 7-inch-long minnow plugs, flies,
big 3 and 4-inch-long trout spoons, 2-pound frozen mackerel
and 7-inch-long plastic worms.
I use all these baits and lures in different situations for one
reason and one reason only, to catch more and bigger fish. I
view all the offerings I’ve listed as tools that make me more
effective on the water in certain situations.
I’ve been using flies and fly gear since my early teens. During my college years,
I was tying and selling about 10,000 flies per year. In fact, my first paid job in the
fishing industry was selling my hand tied flies at the old Castro Valley Sportsman
Shop in the East Bay. The point is, that I know a little bit about flies and fly fishing.
Is using flies and/or fly gear more challenging or more sophisticated than fishing
with gear? Not in my experience. What I can tell you is that if you are a multiple
species angler residing in California and flies are not part of your arsenal, you
aren’t catching as many fish as you could be throughout the year. That’s a fact!
As I said above, I use flies to catch more and bigger fish. In reality, there are a lot
of situations when fish are ridiculously
easy to catch on flies and
in other situations you can catch
fish on flies that you’d struggle to
hook using lures or bait. Flies are
an especially good tool for hooking pressured fish. Here are a
couple examples that will strike a chord with the trout anglers
out there.
You’re up on a Sierra lake and you are doing well hooking
fish trolling lures, casting lures or soaking bait and then it
happens…Mayflies start hatching, the trout start dimpling the
surface and the bite complete shuts down for you.
If you want to go on hooking fish, the solution is simple. Break out a fly rod or rig up
a spinning rod with a “bubble and fly” and get a fly out on the water that imitates the
basic size and color of the mayflies the trout are eating. It’s as simple as that…Fish On!
When we go from getting hit to getting ignored it’s easy to think that trout or other
fish are really smart, but that isn’t the case. In the case of the trout eating mayflies
the opposite is actually true. The behavior is described as “selective feeding”. At that
moment, the most abundant forage is those mayflies and the fish
will ignore anything else.
If you and I were standing next to a conveyor belt covered with
Jelly Beans and a cheese burger came along we might grab it for a
change of pace. Trout aren’t that smart. They’d keep on eating the
same boring Jelly Beans…
Moving on, imagine a destination teaming with freshly planted
trout. It could be a stream or an urban lake. There are lots of trout
in the water and you can actually see them. They’ve been pounded
with every sort of spinner, spoon and trout bait that spinning rod armed anglers
typically carry and the bite has completely shut down.
If you start presenting those trout with flies, particularly small flies you’ll hook fish
after fish after fish to the point that the folks around you will start shooting you the
stink eye. Why?
The trout are hungry, but after a while they’ve started associating standard offerings
with danger, but they will happily suck in that No. 14 light color caddis nymph again
and again and again…LOL!
Upcoming we’ll be talking about gear, flies, different species of fish, different
situations and how flies and fly gear fit into the broader puzzle of becoming the most
effective angler you can be.
Heck, I might even recount the story when my Dad and I caught and released over
250 trout in a single day on the heavily planted waters of Hat Creek using flies. When’s
the last time you are your partner trolled up 250 plus rainbows during a single outing
on minnow plugs or threaded ‘crawlers?
points, offshore humps, reefs, ledges and
expansive flats. I’ll never forget the 5-pound
rainbow I caught using this approach while
fishing at Eagle Lake outside of Susanville,
California.
It was late November and the lake’s weeds
were dying quickly. With so much dead
vegetation drifting around, trolling was pretty
frustrating, since I spent most of my time
picking weeds off the lures. While cruising
around in the lake’s northern basin I located a
12-foot-deep trough cutting across a flat that
ranged from 6 to 8 feet deep. It seemed to me
that rainbows traveling across the flat would
use the trough as a corridor, because the extra
depth would give them a feeling of added
security.
Well, to make a long story shorter, after
checking the wind I determined that the wind
was blowing in roughly the same direction
that the trough ran. This meant that if I
anchored up on the edge of it, I could pretty
much drift my worms right down the slot. By
the time, I set the anchor and had my lines
in the water there was only about an hour of
daylight left and I was a long run from the
launch ramp. At most I’d have 30 minutes to
fish. The spot seemed so good that I expected
action to come quickly, but the fish, if they
were there just didn’t want to cooperate. With
my fishing time nearly exhausted, I went
about organizing my gear before reeling in my
lines.
The breeze was up and there was a pretty
good chop on the water, so when I looked
up and couldn’t immediately locate one of
the bobbers the last thing I thought of was
the possibility that a trout had taken it down.
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HOW TO By Cal Kellogg continued from page 11
Scanning the water for several seconds I
finally caught a movement out of the corner
of my eye. Turning to the left I spotted the
bobber cutting through the chop as it moved
into the wind. Grabbing the rod, I started
working the reel. As soon as the slack was
picked up the rod pulsed into a deep bend
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and line started streaking off the spool
against the tension of the drag.
The trout was powerful and determined
not to come near the boat. At times the trout
would come to the surface and I could see a
big clod of weeds on the line that certainly
weren’t helping my cause. My strategy was
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to keep the rod high, using its flexibility
to put pressure on the hefty ‘bow. After a
5-minute fight that seemed like 30 I was
able to guide the trout to the boat and into
my net. If it wasn’t for slip bobbers there is
no way I would have caught that handsome
battler, that’s for sure!
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