Lake logic

TRIED-AND-TRUE TACTICS FOR CATCHING STILLWATER FISH ON THE FLY

THIS COUNTRY IS home to a series of magical fishing realms that are rarely touched by fly anglers. In these places, called “lakes,” the fish are large and plentiful, and they eagerly bite flies. And while Canada has better lake fishing than almost anywhere else in the world, most fly anglers avoid stillwater. That’s understandable. Fly fishing evolved on rivers, after all, but on lakes—waterbodies at least a kilometre or two across—fly fishing usually isn’t the most efficient way to catch fish.

It’s often reasonably effective, however, and enjoyable, especially during summer. For many of us, lakes are also closer to home and less crowded than popular rivers. For the last decade, I’ve primarily fly fished on stillwater, and the quality and variety of action across the country has been a revelation. So, if you’re looking for more chances to use your fly gear, here’s a primer on fly fishing in lakes.

Use A Boat

From time to time, you’ll happen upon a spot with good fly fishing from shore, but that’s the exception. Stillwater fish move around more than river fish, and you usually need a boat to find them. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, though. You can fly fish from any vessel, paddled or powered, that’s stable and safe for the waterbody at hand. You need to make a few adjustments when fly fishing from a boat, but nothing very difficult (follow the link below for more on this). Boats also make it easy to follow the first rule of lake fishing: If you’re not catching fish, change your location, not your fly.

Read The Water

To the trained eye, rivers give up their secrets easily. On flowing water, fish are quite predicably found near current breaks, in pocket water and so on. By comparison, lakes seem huge and inscrutable, but big water is really just a bunch of many small and distinct sections. Lake fish still need safety and food; they just seek it out in different places, such as weedbeds, drop-offs and reefs. With practice, you can learn to read these places and carefully cast to the most promising spots, just as you’d do in a river. Lakes also have subtle wind-generated currents that strongly influence fish locations. These are obvious to our experienced river eyes, but often less so to conventional lake anglers.

Sink Your Fly

A standard floating fly line is fine when the fish are shallow. To get your fly waist deep, you can just use weighted patterns or put splitshot on your leader. If the water is deeper than six feet, however, a sinking line will get your fly in front of a lot more fish. Add a longish cast and a heavily weighted fly, and you can handily fish as deep as 12 to 15 feet. Fishing this way is noticeably slower than using conventional gear, but if you pick your spots well, it’s still effective. Plus, battling large fish down deep on fly gear is an exciting challenge.

Mind Your Retrieve

In a river, the current animates your fly and moves it along. That means stripping back line is mostly just a task to complete before your next cast. In stillwater, however, the retrieve is everything. It’s your job to make the fly look alive, vulnerable and edible.

Some fly anglers believe a stillwater retrieve should imitate the natural world. I disagree. Instead, I imitate time-tested conventional lures, such as spoons and crankbaits, which dart and wobble like injured prey. To do that, I move my streamers fairly quickly and erratically, and I always pause between strips. On the pause, subsurface flies suspend, undulate and come alive unlike any other lure, and that’s when you’ll get two-thirds of your hits. For common lake species such as bass, walleye and pike, my go-to patterns are two- to four-inch long baitfish and crayfish imitations.

If your goal is to hit the lake, limit out and return home in time for the game, fly fishing probably isn’t the way to go. But if you’re eager to air out your fly rod, lakes open up a lot of new fishing opportunities. Just keep your fly in the water and play to your strengths, and you’ll be able to hold your head high among the hardware chuckers at the dock. OC

SEE PAGE 53, FOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR SCOTT GARDNER ’S GO-TO BASS FLIES.

GARDNER

BY BRAD FENSON