Some fly fishers are generalists, fishing wherever possible, in salt or freshwater, for whatever species are available whenever they have a chance to fish. Some even keep lists of all the species of fish they have caught. Others, however, become specialists. For some, that means becoming regulars on small streams close to home, developing knowledge they keep closely held, guarding their streams and their hard-won experience from the threats of overexposure and misuse. Still others develop a specialized understanding of how to angle for particular species or in particular waters — for steelhead, or in the surf, or in still waters, for example. And some of these share that expertise by becoming advocates for the sport of fly fishing. Stillwater angler Ernie Gulley is one of these generous specialists, and we wanted to learn more about what makes such folks tick.
Bud: You started out, as many of us did, as a conventional-gear angler at an early age. One of the things that anglers worry about these days is how to transmit a love of fishing to younger generations. How did your father accomplish that with you? And conventional-tackle anglers catch plenty of fish. What brought you to angling with the long rod? Who helped make you a better fly fisher, and how did they do it?
Ernie: Learning to fish at a young age was basically the same as learning how to walk and talk in my family. My father was a great hunter and fisherman, and fishing was taught to me when I was very young. My father was 53 years old when I was born. He was born in 1915, and he grew up learning how to fish and hunt to help his family survive. His skills were passed on to me. We all grew up by being started out bait fishing to give us a sense of how the fishing process works. However, it didn’t take me very long to gravitate from fishing any kind of bait to fishing with artificial lures. That was, in my mind, the most rewarding and best way to try to fool a fish.
Living in New Orleans for three years from the age of 9 through 12, I was introduced to fishing spinning outfits and searching for speckled trout in Lake Pontchartrain. I thrived on fishing jigs under a bobber so I could cast out as far as possible and reach the large schools of speckled trout that thrived in Pontchartrain.
Returning to Southern California and living with my father, I started to fish only jigs on spinning outfits and 2-pound-test line for the largest trout I could find. Most spin rods, back in the 1980s, were at the most maybe 5 to 7 feet long. I quickly learned that by using a fly-rod blank, I could have a custom rod built that was 9 to 12 feet long. In Southern California, I was to my knowledge the only angler ever to have custom rods made out of fly rods in order to fish jigs under an indicator seeking trout. While working at The Bass Connection, a bass shop in Riverside, I quickly found that G. Loomis made a noodle-stick blank. This was an 11.5-foot-long rod and was rated by the International Game Fish Association at a 2-pound line-class rating. I was definitely the first angler in Southern California ever to have a custom noodle stick built just for hunting trout. I fished this rod all over the West — California, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho — for the biggest trout I could land on 2-pound line. My largest fish were a 25-pound lake trout and a 19-pound brown trout, both caught in Utah at Fish Lake in the middle of the night. One thing I want to make clear: even though the 2-pound line says “2-pound test” on the spool, it breaks at around 3.5 pounds.
Fishing all of these still waters around the West, I encountered a lot of fly fishers — some who were OK with my technique, some not. It was while fishing in Utah that I met a man by the name of Douw, an excellent fly fisherman, and we started up a good relationship. After a few trips together, he asked me, “Why don’t you fly fish? You are an excellent angler and catch more fish than anyone I know with your technique. However, I feel you could enjoy fly fishing so much more if you just tried it.”
I refused in the beginning, but then I came back to Southern California and started a great friendship with another fly-fishing mentor, Bob Slamal, a legend in the fly-fishing industry. A year later,
I started to fly fish under his tutelage. It wasn’t long before I was fishing both techniques together, and then finally, in 1998, as a New Year’s resolution, I made the plunge into fly fishing exclusively and never looked back.
As I was learning everything I could learn about fly fishing from both Bob and Douw, Bob told me one thing that is ingrained in my memory from the many lessons he taught me in his shop. He once said you should never fish a jig on a fly rod. I have never fished a jig on a fly rod out of respect for my mentor and good friend who just passed away this year, Bob Slamal.
Bud: Fly tyers who tie flies for largemouth bass like to crib ideas from conventional-tackle bass anglers. What did a broader background in conventional-tackle angling contribute to your success as a fly fisher? What can we learn from our conventional-tackle colleagues in the sport?
Ernie: While I was in school and working for a few years at a bass shop, I learned a lot about trying to duplicate certain movements of each food item — minnows, perch fry, bluegills, and crawdads. Each has certain traits and characteristics: how they move during regular movement and then while at risk of being attacked by prey. Not only the movements, but the colors are very critical to matching each food item. When I worked at the shop, if we wanted a certain color, we just made it by mixing colors or bleeding in the colors after we poured the rubber worm or grub. I used to take clear plastic jigs and put in a certain color, such as olive or green, and bleed the color into the clear skirts to mimic the perfect color to match different fry or crawdads. Now, when tying flies for certain food items, I try to color the feathers to a certain shade and add layers to patterns to try to get the same effect. This, of course, is much more difficult, but very rewarding when you tie your own flies.
Making lures move correctly using conventional tackle is by far a lot easier than when fishing with flies and a fly rod. I found this to be the most difficult thing to try to master. I use dozens of different hand retrieves, speeds, and rod motions to help imitate how a food item is supposed to be moving in the water column. This to me is the most intriguing aspect of fly fishing.
Bud: You’re a specialist in fishing still waters, especially for trout. What brought about that specialization — was it just the
abundance of impoundments in Southern California, or is there some special appeal you find in stillwater fly fishing?
Ernie: I have always had a love and passion for stillwater fly fishing. In most circumstances, the largest trout are found in still waters. I love to put the time in on the water to figure out how to fool the largest fish in the lake. It’s kind of me against the lake, just like a golfer against the golf course.
Bud: As writers of how-to books on fly fishing still waters always point out, such places can befuddle stream-bred anglers who are accustomed to looking for obvious structure in moving water. How should a beginner go about approaching a lake, reservoir, or pond?
Ernie: The one aspect of stillwater fly fishing that makes it difficult for new anglers is trying to figure out where the fish are in this big hole in the ground called a pond or a lake. These waters have many different shapes, depths, and sizes, just like a stream, but they are not as easy to read as a stream. On a river, you can just walk up and see the bends, runs, riffles, channels, and pools, but how do you figure anything out on lake?
Start with the contour of the shoreline. In most instances, the slope of the shoreline away from the water will give you a very good indication of the slope of the lake bottom there. How steep is the shoreline? From a distance away from the water, how does the landscape enter into the water? Does the slope gradually enter the water, or does it enter the water at a steep angle? This gives you a read on how deep each area of the lake is without using a depth-finder.
Among the most important things to look for in still waters are the transition areas, or what I call “curtains, where the color of the water changes from light to dark. These are shallow areas that drop down into deeper areas. In the shallow area, or shoal, the water will warm up much more quickly. Fish will feel comfortable there and move in to feed under low-light conditions, but will retreat back into the depths when the sun becomes higher at midday. Once this happens, fish swim along the edge of the drop-off looking for food items to prey on while feeling secure in the darker, deeper water. Weed beds, rock piles, channels, points, peninsulas, coves — all are great reference points to find areas of transition where fish will hold and look for prey.
Wind direction is another huge factor. When wind blows across a land point, it creates a moving current line, like a small river. This current will gather and flush food items in the lake into one small lane, and fish will always take advantage of this situation. When the wind blows directly into a shoreline or into a cove, this will push food items in the water into that one small area, and fish will really take advantage then. Wind can also create changes in water clarity. By mixing up the bottom of the lake floor, a transition or curtain forms based on water clarity. Fish will gather on the edge of the curtain in the clear water.
Likewise, if there is algae in the lake, in most cases, the algae is only two to three feet below the surface, and after that the water is perfectly clear. When the wind blows algae around the lake, it forms a beautiful transition area from clean, clear water to green. Take advantage and fish what I call at Crowley “the clean-to-green line.”
Finally, don’t forget to fish transition areas where the bottom of the lake suddenly changes, for example where a mud bottom changes to rocks or rocks change to sand. When you find these areas of transition, you will always find fish. In many cases you can see these changes from the shoreline.
Bud: Apart from such basics, while all still waters have much in common, they also can be very different from each other, each presenting idiosyncratic challenges and opportunities. You guide on several very different bodies of water — Crowley Lake, Bridgeport Reservoir, Big Bear Lake, and Silverwood Lake — and give talks on how to fish waters as different as Kirman Lake, Heenan Lake, Pyramid Lake, and pay-to-play lakes such as Five Dot. How do you come to terms with the difference that each lake presents?
Ernie: All of the still waters I have fished in the West have different keys to success. However, by learning how to fish your local still waters proficiently, you can use the same formula to be successful at any given venue around the world.
Each stillwater venue is simultaneously very similar and very different in nature. Some lakes are very shallow, with much aquatic weed growth and muddy bottoms to support the weeds and bug life. Some lakes are shaped like a large bowl, very deep and not much mud, but with more rocky bottoms, and there, the forage base for trout tends to be minnows and fry. So you must adjust your methods and patterns based on the major food
source in the lakes at the particular time of the year you are fishing.
Crowley Lake has a very muddy bottom that supports large populations of midges, Callibaetis mayflies, and damselflies. You can attack this lake with floating, hover, and intermediate lines. Pyramid Lake is very deep, and the main food source is the tui chub. Fish there hold in deeper water most of the year, looking for the large schools of baitfish as their target prey. You attack a lake like this with faster-sinking lines to get down into the depths where the chubs are holding. So with shallow, fertile lakes, it is more about imitating bug life, while deeper lakes have fewer bugs and more minnows and fry that the fish are looking for as prey.
But there is one approach that is critical to learning how to fish any given body of water. The power of observation is the most critical tool you need to become a successful stillwater fly fisher. There is an old saying — 10 percent of the anglers catch 90 percent of the fish. In my opinion, however, only 10 percent pay attention to 90 percent of what is going on around them.
If you’re not catching fish, are other anglers around you catching fish? What are they doing differently? Are you fishing in the same depth of water? Are you fishing the same depth off the bottom or from the surface? Are you retrieving at the same speed? Are you allowing your fly to sink deep enough in the water column, or maybe too much? If other anglers around you are having success, put your rod under your arm, take a few minutes, and watch what they are doing. There is a reason why they are being successful. Use them as a tool to learn unfamiliar waters and to put you on the fast track to being a more successful angler. This is a concept I use every time out on the water, no matter what venue I am fishing.
Bud: You’re not just a stillwater specialist, but a specialist in fishing Lake Crowley, which is in many ways a unique fishery. What are the quirks that Crowley presents, and what are the keys to success in fishing there?
Ernie: Crowley is by far the most interesting fishery in the West. It just may be the perfect prototype for a stillwater environment. With its elevation, multiple freshwater streams constantly flowing in throughout the year, abundant bug life, and perch fry, it is a f ishfood hatchery throughout the entire season.
Chironomids are one of the primary food items at Crowley. Chironomids make up about 40 percent of a trout’s diet in any fertile stillwater environment, and Crowley has a prolific midge hatch every season. We fish chironomids under an indicator at Crowley, and I feel this lake alone has helped revolutionize the way we fish indicators in trout fishing.
Because Crowley has so many anglers throughout the season, to stay ahead of the pack, you must constantly change your tactics when fishing chironomids. You must have a multitude of colors, constantly keep changing and experimenting, hour to hour, day to day, to keep up with the fish. The old saying about Crowley is, “The only thing consistent about Crowley is change.” This is how I have become so consistently successful in my guiding and angling at Crowley — I’m never afraid of making changes!
Bud: I see that you’ve participated successfully in angling competitions at Crowley. Some anglers disdain such things. What appeals to you about them?
Ernie: I have always been a highly competitive person. I love the competitive side of sports, business, and life. For years, I wanted to participate in the Double Haul in the Fall tournament they had at Crowley. The only thing that held me back was the way the tournament handled the fish. I didn’t like the way the fish were taken out of the net and then placed on boards to be measured, putting the fish in harm’s way. Finally, though, I did break down and competed in the last two Double Hauls at Crowley and won in 2007, which was the final Double Haul held there and which now has been replaced by a great tournament called The Stillwater Classic. This tournament takes place in August, and they use nets to keep the fish in the water while measuring them. This is a perfect way to protect the fish for proper catch-and-release angling.
Bud: You’ve also been active in fly-fishing clubs and have accepted leadership positions there — something that’s a lot of work and that often goes thankless. What role do you see for fly-fishing clubs these
days, and how can they recruit new and younger members?
Ernie: This is a fantastic question! How do we try to grow our fly-fishing clubs and attract new and younger members now and in the future? I have spoken at many clubs in California and Arizona. This past year, I spoke to 25 different audiences regarding different still waters and techniques. I have found that in all clubs we do have many older anglers and not very many younger anglers.
This has been an issue I have discussed with many clubs and at fly-fishing shows in the past, and I can come up with only one answer. We as fly anglers must each be more active and spread as much enthusiasm as we can about the great sport and industry of fly fishing.
One of the ways I try to help is that each time I speak at a different club, I always try to fish one of the still waters close by and pass on the word about the club. I promote club membership, club by club. As an example, I was fishing Pyramid Lake a few years back and was also presenting to the Truckee River Fly Fishers for their club banquet. I fished Pyramid for three days before the banquet and passed out more than two dozen of my cards with the club’s information on them and tried to persuade each angler I came in contact with to come by and try out the club. I let them know that each fly-fishing club has casting lessons, fly tying, and Fly Fishing 101 courses, and each club offers a great way to meet new anglers and learn about fly fishing while enjoying fantastic new fly-fishing destinations. In California, I always point out the club closest to where each angler lives, so they have an opportunity to stop by and learn the benefits of being part of a fly-fishing club.
Bud: You’ve guided a lot of people, and like most guides, no doubt have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in the people you’ve served. How do you handle the challenges of guiding, and what keeps you going?
Ernie: I love being a guide. Teaching stillwater fly-fishing tactics is my passion, and I love sharing my passion and getting positive feedback in return. I love to watch anglers grow right in front of my eyes, from the beginning of the trip to the end. I consider myself very fortunate to be able to have such a positive impact on my friends’ and clients’ lives through the art of fly fishing. There is not one day when I am out on the water that I don’t learn something new about fly fishing or about people.
Guiding someone who has never fly fished before in their life, introducing them for the very first time to our beautiful sport, whether a child, an adult, young or old, knowing that they have entrusted me this specific moment in time, that they have allowed me to be a part of their lives, their memories — this is what keeps me coming back every day. My most favorite trips are when I have the opportunity to host three generations at the same time, son, father, and grandfather, and to watch all three act just like kids in the enjoyment of the day, making memories that will last a lifetime.
So in my opinion, there are no bad or ugly people that we guide. There are challenges, however. We as guides need to listen to what the client wants from the guide trip. In most cases, I feel a client wants to hire a guide because they want to learn, catch some fish, and also be entertained throughout the whole experience. We as guides need to be specific and ask our clients, “What are you looking for out of your guide trip today? Do you want to learn more, do you just want to catch fish, or are you looking to do both and enjoy just being outdoors and away from the hustle and bustle of work and life?”
Bud: Here we are at the traditional and hence obligatory Silly Tree Question. If you were a tree, what kind of a tree would you be?
Ernie: I would like to be an oak, the strongest of all trees. It has the ability to stand tall, shelter anyone who needs shelter, and be a larger than life role model for all trees to follow.
