Anglers No Longer Frozen Out

For the region’s anglers, it’s been a long, frustrating winter. Except for brief periods, the ice was either too thin for safe ice fishing or too thick to open holes with rocks. Just a long winter.

Many anglers put away their ice augers without ever using them.

Finally, most lakes that often produce good trout fishing in March no longer are covered with ice, insects are stirring and fish are looking for juicy tidbits.

When Clay Findlay and I drove to the Columbia Basin a few days ago, we wondered whether we’d catch a few trout. We had heard that fishing was mediocre at many of the lakes that were opened to fishing March 1. Consequently, we decided to fish one of the small seep lakes that is open the year around.

Findlay pulled on new ultra-lightweight neoprene waders and wading shoes before we started our hike to a lake. Although the area had been covered by snow only a few days before we arrived, green grass was showing around fragrant sagebrush bushes. As we passed a small pond, hundreds of frogs were singing their mating songs.

Findlay strung an intermediate sinking line on his rod and tied a black leech pattern to the tippet. He hooked two or three fat, silvery rainbows before I was suited up. I started with a floating line and a mahogany-colored mohair leech.

Either Findlay’s leech was more attractive to the rainbows than mine or his intermediate sinking line was getting the pattern down to where the trout were looking for food. He hooked and released a couple more while I got a half-hearted take on mine.

Finally, I left the spot and walked several hundred yards down the lake shore, changed my floating line for a line that has 5 feet of slow sinking tip, tied a black Woolly Bugger on my tippet, waded out and cast into the 20-miles-per-hour wind.

A fish took the pattern almost immediately, jumped out of the water several times and then tugged hard for a couple of minutes or so before I brought it in and released it. I caught a rainbow each of the next three casts. The jumping trout apparently spooked other trout in the area and no more fish hit the fly the next few casts. I moved about 50 feet down the shoreline and started hooking trout again.

The Woolly Bugger, which suggests leeches to trout, proved to be the most effective pattern for the day. The reason was apparently because leeches and tiny chironomid pupae were the only insects available to the fish. Findlay stomach-pumped several trout before releasing them and pulled out a few 2-inch-long gray-black leeches and near-microscopic midge pupae.

Damselfly, dragonfly and mayfly nymphs, as well as scuds, still weren’t active in the 45-degree water. The trout had to take what was available.

The chrome bright, deep-bodied rainbows were food for a fisherman’s soul and soothing balm for his ego. They hit hard, put on aerial displays, tugged so hard that we had to give them line and, finally, came to our hands for release.

We settled down to a routine of casting, hooking fish, playing them and then releasing them. Periodically, we’d see a few ducks and hear geese as they flew near the lake.

The time came, though, when I had caught enough fish to satisfy my pent-up yearnings to feel a strong trout at the end of my line. I clipped off the Woolly Bugger and began experimenting with various patterns. I caught a fish or two on a reddish-brown mohair leech, one on a purple leech, none on a scud or a Six Pack.

Finally, I couldn’t resist tying the Woolly Bugger back on my tippet. The fish responded by hitting it nearly every time I cast.

Findlay, too, had done a little experimenting. And he found that his black leech pattern was much more productive than any other pattern.

It had been a satisfying day, the first rewarding day of the year for me. (I had fished for trout at Hog Canyon and chinook salmon at Lake Coeur d’Alene, but had been skunked.) Findlay, a fly fisher who fishes more than anyone I know, had caught big trout at Rocky Ford Creek earlier in the year. Still, he was contented.

The fishing that day was a harbinger of wonderful fishing days. It won’t be long before damselfly, dragonfly and mayfly nymphs will start hatching and the scuds, backswimmers and other bugs will be active.

Of course, multiple hatches will create match-the-hatch problems for fly fishers, especially the new fly fishers who have been attending fly fishing classes during the winter months. But those will be happy problems.

Then there will be so many places to fish that there won’t be enough days to fish everything. All too soon, another fishing season will have passed and we’ll be dreaming again of hatching flies and rising trout.

You can contact Fenton Roskelley by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 3814.

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