It has begun! While the opener this year maybe wasn’t as good as years past, there were still countless 20+ pound fish caught in just the first week alone and overall things are looking promising for another excellent year at the lake. There are two main methods of finding fish on fly gear out here right now. Both involve a boat, electronics and persistence. While we use the term boat loosely, because you’ll see everything from Boston Whalers to pontoons, kayaks and float tubes getting in on the action, the idea is you have some means of getting into deeper water, using a fish finder to mark not only the trout, but more importantly the bait balls of Tui Chub, and you hold over them trying to get your presentation down 30-60 feet. 

The two main differences would come in how you get them down. The more traditional way would be to use the fasting sinking line made (I.E. a type 7 or 8 full sink line) with a moderately weighted streamer and give is a solid count down, using a bit of math in an attempt to try and gauge how deep you’re fishing before stripping it back up, rinse and repeat. The second, and increasingly more popular method would be to use flies tied on heavy lead head jigs and use a thin, low stretch line of some kind, like braid or even dacron backing, attach a short fluoro leader to it and fish a much more vertical presentation, which gets down quicker and has better strike detection. You essentially drop your jigs down to the bottom, get tight to them and either jig or strip them, bringing them back to the boat before dropping them down again. While this isn’t exactly fly fishing in the traditional sense, it’s effective, and a fun way to find the big early season fish on your fly gear. Just be sure to use a stout rod like an 8wt or heavier, definitely no 6 weights out here! 

All of that said, if you would like help trying either of these methods of early season fishing at the lake, stop in the shop and we are happy to help you get set up the right way! If targeting fish in 50 feet of water on fly gear doesn’t really interest you and you want to just wait until the shore bite starts up, we should see that by about mid-to-late November, depending on when the lake flips and the fish begin to cruise the shoreline.