Go-To high mountain lake dry?

[JeffreyJim]

Fishing up on the Grand Mesa yesterday from a float tube and I felt like I was in a pot of boiling water at times. Fish everywhere.

I tried about 20 different dry flies and couldn't figure out exactly what they were hitting. Only action I got all night was a 6" trout on a RS2 dropper.

There was a blue winged olive hatch but it didn't seem to be the fly the fish were keyed in on (the hatch would happen and there would be no action in that part of the lake)

I did notice a redish looking fly that would sort of skate on the surface of the water. This might have been the ticket but even then I'm unsure.

So...what should have I thrown?

Flies tried:

Adams (para and non)
Blue winged olive (three variations)
Elk hair caddis
Green drake (long shot I know)
Royal Wulff
Black skeeter imitation thing

What did I forget?

[Rico in Flag]

So...what should have I thrown?

A net mabye...



I know the feeling/aggravation well.

Seriously though, sometimes it's not about the fly, but the size. Usually, if a pattern your using is the right pattern, but ain't working, go smaller. The Adams you were throwing seems like a good choice, but try smaller.
Were the fish leaping completely out of the water? Or were they coming to the surface and just sucking in some bugs? My second thought is some kind of midge emerger. Like the RS-2 you got the one with. Or maybe midge adults, like a Griffiths Gnat, or a midge cluster.

This is a dilemma I still haven't got completely figured out.

[Vinman]

size is definitely a factor or they could have taking the emerger and not the duns.

[khakis]

chernobyl ants and foam beetles are good alpine lake go-tos

[Chowda]

There was a blue winged olive hatch but it didn't seem to be the fly the fish were keyed in on (the hatch would happen and there would be no action in that part of the lake)


What did I forget?

pheasant tail. Chances are the fish didn't run away from hatching bwos, so if they weren't hitting the top they were likely gorging on active nymphs. The rs2 was also a good choice but maybe get it deeper?

This is why I'm not a big fan of trout fishing on lakes with a fly rod. When the fish feed deep it can get almost hopeless unless you have a sinking line. Or like khakis recommended hammer them with BIG terrestrials.

[troutah]

I am going to say nymphs and emergers. Sounds like you tried all the dry flies that should have produced more than a 6-incher. Maybe they were taking an emerger of what you were seeing. Sounds super frustrating though.

[hartzejr]

cdc emergers



Or a reversed para cdc emerger. Like this but with a cdc parachute.


A recent tip I learned as well is to tie a bit of cdc at the shank just sticking out to look like the casing of the emerger (ie its just emerging/vulnerable). Been working great for me on the local lakes.

[Denny1969]

It's always good to add ants to your stillwater box.

The skating fly could had been some sort of caddis. There is a stillwater caddis that looks like it is skating or running on the surface. If the wings were down and tent shaped, that could had been the bug.

One thing that I did not see on your list, nor did anyone mention, was a Callibaetis mayfly. These stillwater mayflies are gray in the body with dun colored wings. They are common in the western states. You should have crippled and adult forms of the bug ranging from 14 to 20. When you visit your local shop, have the shop guy show you some different Callibaetis flies.

As much as I enjoy seeing the take of a dry, I prefer to fish soft hackled wet flies. When a fish takes the fly, I feel it. Here is a Callibaetis soft hackle that I tie up for myself.



Denny

[Chowda]

Denny may be on to something. BWOs are a bit out of season, is it possible the flies were actually calibeatis?

I think they have a very active swimming nymph that can hold the fish's attention below the surface and explain why things got so quiet around the hatch.

[neckdeep]

Callibaetis duns are easy to identify. Light gray wing speckled with black hence the bugs nickname "speckled wing dun." Up close, they don't look like a BWO. It is odd the fish didn't key in on the adults as the hatch and its spinner fall is known as the best dry fly hatch (not counting winged ants, etc) to occur in most rocky mountain lakes. It also hatches in very slow spring creeks and meadow streams. The natural is a much lighter gray than a parachute adams, but I'd think a #14-16 parachute adams should work for more than one dink. In bright conditions, however, the color difference would be fairly visible to the fish. It is also possible that the fish were selectively feeding on the spinners and that is more likely to occur in the late afternoon through sunset as the spinner fall accumulates on the water. Stripping a red copper john or fishing it below an indicator is a popular technique for fishing the swimming nymph.

If the reddish skating fly looked sort of like a moth, it was a caddis. If it looked like an oversized, long legged mosquito, it was probably a cranefly.

[east or bust]

Go-To high mountain lake dry?

There's some good info in this thread so figured I'd bump this instead of starting a new thread.

Got my ass handed to me on Sunday morning on a large Teton region lake, not an alpine lake. We anchored in a cove that had inflow from a mtn stream and there were fish rising everywhere. Some sips, but a lot were almost full on breaching. Couldn't see anything on the water so tried a small midge first as there were a couple fuzzy butts hovering above the water, no luck. By that point I was convinced they weren't eating anything actually on the surface so switched to a small streamer despite only having a floating line 5wt with me. Obviously that didn't produce either. Just as we were pulling anchor I was able to reach a struggling bug on the surface that turned out to be a Callibaetis dun that had probably just hatched.

If I could go back in time would it have made sense to be throwing a Callibaetis emerger or stripping a nymph? Just had never really experienced fish acting like that in a lake and was definitely out of my element. Some of them were lunkers too...

[plugboots]

One of my favorite things is throwing Calibaetis patterns to cruising sipping trout.

[beer30]

I remember trolling batis nymphs on July fourth at Paulina lake and catching Kokanee one after the other. It’s amazing how versatile a fly rod can be