Monday, May 26, 2014

The Chironomid Game

Yesterday a friend and i made the trip outside town to a small private lake.

We arrived around 7:45 and launched the boat and headed straight for a spot that produced all of my fish on the previous trip. At the drop of the anchor we got our lines in the water set to 13 ft in 14 ft of water. After 15 minutes of trying it became apparent the fish had moved, which wasn't anticipated though it has been a month since my last trip here.

after no action at all and barely any surface activity we decided it was best to pull anchor and troll until we found concentrations of fish before anchoring and fishing chironomids again.We trolled near the edge of  the weed beds and ended up catching two fish, but spread out unfortunately. Early in the day i had observed fish rising in the upper end of the lake, but i thought that  they had to be warm water fish, because the upper end of the lake (near the inlet) is shallow, but upon getting closer we realized they were trout eating damsels and chironomids.


After realizing there were a lot of trout surrounding us we anchored in 6ft of water to the west of the creek channel and threw bloodworm/pupa combos about half a foot off the bottom, and within minutes we were in to some rainbows in the shallows! steadily for the next few hours we caught fat fish gorging on chironomids anywhere from 14 to 21 inches and length, all were fat and eating very well.we totaled 30 fish exactly between us for the day and did hook a few of the larger fish in the lake, but were not able to land them, A few fish even made it to the backing! it wasn't uncommon for a fish to jump 4 ft out of the water after a blazing run.


Water clarity was still sub par at about 2-2 1/2 ft, but the fish didn't seem to care like last time.Water temp only reached around 61 mid day and didn't stay high for long. Once it reached around 3:30 we pulled anchor and caught a few trolling buggers before  taking out and heading to taco bell for a much needed greasy meal.

it was a great day and was a good stress reliever at the end of the school year.
















Friday, May 9, 2014

How to pass time & new url update

The one sucky part about planning a fishing trip in advance? the wait. Coping with the wait ,especially when a week or longer, can kill me. So i decided to make it productive. The trip planned is a stillwater trip with friends for next weekend.A lot of preparation goes into these trips because of the complexity of the rigs used for chironomid fishing. Though simplified, they still aren't your run of the mill tapered 9ft leader and dry fly rig, or anything near that.

Today i spent my time with a tape measure and leader materials making sections for leaders specific lengths, for specific lakes and depths. Though i am not near an expert stillwater angler the experience i do have lets me narrow down leader section lengths, so i don't have to spend my time guessing what lengths i should make out of what size leader.


Still have a mess to clean up from that but now on to putting my strike indicators together and re organizing my fly box. Ive spent quite a bit of time filling the box in the past few days as well trying to help pass the time.


Here are some recent ties, recipes will be available shortly.  On another note, the url of this blog has been changed to be more fitting, i realize this has been an inconvenience for thsoe who commonly view the blog, but strings should all be worked out shortly.Obviously if you are viewing this psot you have already found out, but for future reference  the new url for pacific northwest fly fishing is  linked below



http://northwestflyfish.blogspot.com/

















Saturday, May 3, 2014

Spring in Central Oregon

     Early this week a good friend and i made the first trip over the mountain to the central Oregon lakes.With high hopes and not knowing what to expect we started the week off at diamond lake.Diamond being a premier stillwater in oregon always gets me excited as i know the possibilities of not only large fish, but great numbers as well.

We started off in the usual depths where fish are usually found, and right off the bat it was bobber (indicator) down! the fish was a year old 12 incher, and a fat one. After that things never really picked up, and we moved a lot covering water only to find a few more fish either chironomid fishing, or trolling with our sink lines from spot to spot.After 6 hours of hard fishing we had only a total of 8 fish, the biggest being the 19 incher my friend landed. After the disappointment of a slow day at diamond we packed up and headed for hosmer, only to find that the road was still snowed over good about 1/8 mile in.


Leaving hosmer we headed for lava lake, and decided to spend our next 2 days there if the fishing was good, and good it was.After my friend located the drop off's on the shoals he hammered the rainbows fishing chironomids, as did i from time to time.During the first day the chironomid fishing was solid for hours until the evening arrived when fish would move shallow, at that time we would pull anchor, and strip flies on sink lines for the aggressive bows'!


On the second day (half day) i got a late start and caught up to my friend on a new area we hand't fished since being there, and it turned out to be the mother load. Anchored up in one spot without moving from about 10:00 to 2:00 the bite was so good all of our rods would get bit within 5 seconds of eachother! my friend would often hook one fish, then another on his second rod! it was such an incredible bite while it lasted you couldn't help but laugh.The fish were all very well conditioned, some even fat, and full of fight,especially on our 4wt rods.


It was an excellent start to the season, and though it will be a low water year, i think fishing will be excellent on some of our lakes.


waiting for a plunge

Can't beat the scenery!

anticipation 

Leeches

Fish on!

A healthy  lava lake rainbow taken on a maroon leech pattern