Fish Sniffer On Demand Digital Edition Issue 3725 Nov. 23-Dec 7 | Page 8

8 Nov 23 - Dec 7, 2018 VOL.37 • ISS. 25 Fly Trolling Notes! presents Have You Tried Trolling Streamer Flies For Trout? ^ The arctic fox fur used in Arctic Fox Trolling Flies closely mimics the movements of baitfish when pulled through the water. Light colored flies and dark over light flies do an outstanding job of imitating pond smelt and shad. ^ In lakes that have tui chubs olive pattern flies can be very effective, but If the trout don’t respond to natural colors, bright colored patterns can trigger reaction strikes. Arctic Fox flies feature bold eyes and these can also be an important trigger for creating strikes. < In the high country gold lures have a well deserved reputation for producing trout. If you find yourself in a situation like that, rig up with a gold or brown trout pattern fly and get ready to yell fish on! ^ Here we see an awesome rainbow that slammed a fly teamed with a Wigglefin Action Disc. To achieve success while trolling Arctic Fox Flies it’s critical to team your fly with an Action Disc. H ave you? I’m sure some folks reading this have, but I’ll bet the majority of trouters out there have not. I have a pretty strong fly fishing back- ground, having fished exclusively with fly tackle for more than a decade in my late teens and 20’s, so I can attest to how deadly flies are when it comes to catching more and bigger trout. Despite this, up until this year I’d never really trolled with flies seriously. Being a match the hatch sort of guy, I spend a lot of time trolling spoons, plugs and rigged bait in order to match the look of the baitfish that trout feed on. It was my conversations with Bryan Roccucci of Big Daddy’s Guide Service that really got me thinking about using flies. At certain times of the year at lakes like Eagle and Almanor, Bryan’s client hook a lot of big trout on Arctic Fox Trolling Flies. “Denis Pierce owns Arctic Fox Trolling Flies and his creations are absolutely deadly. You’ve got to play with them a bit and dial them into your style of fishing, but once you do look out. Every year we catch some really huge trout on Arctic Fox flies,” said Roccucci. As an editor at the Fish Sniffer one of the biggest advantages I have is getting direct instruction from legendary anglers like Roccucci, Rick Kennedy, Gary Miralles and Monte Smith, so based on Bryan’s recommendation I knew it was time to give some Artic Fox flies and try. I already had a pair of shad pattern Arctic Fox flies in my kit, but I’d never tried them. A lot of lakes I fish have shad, but some of them don’t so I figured it would be a good idea to pick up some more flies in a few different colors. The next time I drove into Auburn I headed right over to Will Fish Tackle. I grabbed a couple tui chub pattern flies and a rainbow trout fly that was absolutely beautiful. At the cash register, Will Fish owner Craig Newton spotted the flies, reached behind the counter and tossed in a UV pond smelt pattern fly. “That pond smelt fly is on the house Cal,” Craig said. “When you start trolling Folsom this winter run that fly. It’s a real killer.” So how have my Arctic Fox Trolling Fly experiments gone so far? In short, the results have been amazing. On my first trip using the flies at Almanor, I nailed a massive wild rainbow that weighed in a whisker short of 7 pounds on a shad/smelt pattern fly. On my next trip to Lake Davis I caught several trout in excess of 2 pounds on rainbow and tui chub pattern flies… Now I know that like any other lure or bait, flies are not going to work at every lake in every situation. But so far my results have been pretty amazing. I’m far from a trolling fly expert and I want to learn more, but based on the success I’ve had so far, I thought I’d share my ideas and observations with you. First let’s talk about the flies themselves. For starters, if you take an Arctic Fox Trolling Fly and simply draw it through the water there isn’t much action. If you troll it that way the result won’t be very good. You can impart action by teaming the fly with a dodger like you’d do with a hoochie and that works okay, but often I like stay stealthy and leave the blades in the tackle box. Enter the Wigglefin Action Disc. For the uninitiated, Action Discs are round clear plastic discs that you thread onto your leader before attaching your fly. FISH SNIFFER HOW – TO by Cal Kellogg CONTINUED ON PG 14