Fly Tier Comes Up With Bright Idea

Kokanee feed on zooplankton, insect larvae and midges, all tiny. The zooplankton is nearmicroscopic. Midges are so small that fly fishers tie imitations on quarter-inch-long hooks.

If you were to design a fly pattern to catch kokanee, wouldn’t you think small - so small that you’d have to use spider-web thin tippet so that you could thread it through the hook eye?

So what’s the theory behind the use of flies so large that a self-respecting rainbow or brown trout would turn tail and run? None of the creators of out-sized patterns being towed around Loon and Roosevelt lakes and other big kokanee waters in the region has a theory. They’ve found that kokanee will hit an inch-and-a-half-long fly as quickly as they will a Wedding Ring spinner, Kokanee Glow, Cherry Bobber or Needlefish.

Old Oncorhynchus Nerka, the scientific moniker of the kokanee, isn’t selective. Or maybe he is. He seems to like outrageously bright colors.

Don Ostlund, a thinking man’s fisherman and a man who catches more kokanee every year than 95 percent of other anglers, has dreamed up several fly patterns that would shock a match-the-hatch fly fisher. Surprisingly, the 16- to 19-inch kokanee in Loon and Roosevelt lakes eat them up.

Ostlund is known by his peers as a bait fisherman. But few know that he’s an excellent fly tier and that he can cast a fly along with the most proficient fly fishers. He’s a man who catches fish many ways.

The main ingredient of all his kokanee flies is fluorescent surveyors’ tape. He uses fluorescent floss for tying thread and the tails of his patterns. For hackles, he uses dyed, colorful hen hackle feathers.

The hooks he uses are an inch-and-a-quarter to more than an inch and a half long. Usually, he ties his flies on Nos. 2 and 4 high quality, long-shank straight-eye hooks, but he turns some out on 2/0 hooks. A 2/0 hook is big, too big even for most steelhead fishermen.

He sometimes adds a “stinger” hook to hook short-striking kokanee. He snells the stinger hook with 15-pound-test monofilament and snells it at the head of the main hook.

Before he gets started, he cuts surveyors’ tape into quarter-inch-wide strips and sets out fluorescent hackle feathers. He uses green or pink fluorescent floss for his tying thread.

He snips off two or three short pieces of floss for the tail and then wraps the surveyors’ tape around the shank of the hook until he has created a fat body. Finally, he ties in a hackle feather and then wraps it around a few times and ties off near the hook eye.

He ties surveyors’ tape flies in reds, pinks, green, chartreuse and yellow. All fascinate kokanee. However, Ostlund is partial to red; therefore, he uses red surveyors’ tape on the majority of his flies.

Not surprisingly, Ostlund always seems to have only a few surveyors’ tape patterns in his fly and lure boxes. A generous man, he gives most of his flies to friends.

Ostlund often uses a 000 Dodger about 30 inches ahead of a fly, primarily because the dodger pulls out the line quickly. The fly is so light that it won’t pull the line from the reel. Ostlund doesn’t like to feed the line out by hand. Takes too much time.

He threads a maggot or two and sometimes a kernel of corn on the hook before letting out the line.

Ostlund and his friends have hooked numerous big kokanee on his flies at Loon Lake during the last few weeks. They’ve also caught big kokanee, as well as rainbows, on the flies at Lake Roosevelt.

Ostlund is convinced that big, colorful flies will work as well as standard lures at most lakes where there are kokanee.

His flies aren’t the only fly patterns that are used to catch kokanee. Bruce Fisher, who lives at Loon Lake, ties and markets flies for trollers. They’re far different from Ostlund’s flies, but they’re effective.

The most popular Fisher Fly is a pattern tied on a No. 6 hook with a No. 10 triple-hook stinger.

For Ostlund and his friends, the time for trolling for the big kokanee is just about over. Ostlund is now replenishing his supply of glow hooks for still fishing at night.

When I visited him at his home, he was involved in a slow, tedious process of creating about 100 glow hooks. He wraps hook shanks with about 15 turns of lead wire and then paints each with six coats of white paint. Then he applies several coats of high-grade fluorescent paint. Finally, he paints eyes on each of the hooks.

He won’t need 100 glow hooks. He knows that his friends will cadge the majority of the hooks during the night fishing season.

Resort operators have asked Ostlund to produce surveyors’ tape flies and glow hooks for sale to kokanee fishermen. No way, he always answers. Producing flies and glow hooks for sale would no longer be fun. And besides, the slow work would take too much time away from fishing.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

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