With summer come the doldrums of the stillwater trout angler’s year. The trout migrate to cooler, deeper water as temperatures rise, and you cook in bright summer sun while finding few fish to take your offerings. Fish do move into the shallows to feed, but only very early and late, if there is food to draw them in, and midday summer surface water temperatures can reach and even exceed 75 degrees Fahrenheit for short periods of time, even at Davis Lake, elevation 5,600 feet. Not only is this out of the comfort level of coldblooded trout, but the oxygen-carrying capacity of water drops, and trout suffer the way we do when we go from sea level to higher altitudes. Fish are sluggish, and release-mortality rates increase dramatically. Many pay-to-play lakes close in midsummer to protect their expensive fish. Angling ethics suggest that we limit our fishing under extreme conditions when our quarry might not revive.
It can seem as if the summer doldrums never will end. Where I live in the Sierra foothills, September and October still bring summer heat. We experience October air temperatures into the eighties, sometimes higher, despite there being subfreezing nighttime temperatures on the other side of Donner Summit, in Truckee, within the same 24-hour period.
But mercifully, fall brings a respite, beginning with those nighttime lows, as the long daylight hours of summer begin to fade. Upper water column temperatures drop, which makes the water denser, and then a lake starts the annual turnover process where water destratifies, mixes, and oxygenates more uniformly. After turnover, lake water will often be a bit cloudy and have weedy debris for a week or so, a telling sign, and the fish can be funky, but then the water clears, and fish roam the entire water column in comfort, often feeding ravenously as winter approaches and new insect hatches begin. The angling can be explosive and can run well into November, but conditions may be favorable earlier than you think. So keep an eye on nighttime temperatures near the lakes you fish.
What hatches can you expect during autumn? The fall’s big three are second-generation and third-generation Callibaetis mayflies, large midges of several species, and well as ants and termites. The Callibaetis mayfly, the most common stillwater mayfly, is characterized by its brownish-gray or even darker speckled upright wings. It hatches in two and possibly three generations through the spring and fall, each subsequent hatch decreasing in size. Early generations may be imitated with patterns tied on size 14 hooks, then later on size 16s and even size 18s. For nymphs, size 14s and 16s seem to do the trick. A superb combination that works almost universally is a size 16 or 18 Parachute Adams with a small Pheasant Tail Nymph dropper.
During the fall, as well as during the spring, Callibaetis hatches often offer sight-fishing opportunities using a nymph, emerger, or dun imitations. Fish will take the upright-winged duns, but more often cruise slowly, often maddeningly so, picking off nymphs and emergers in the surface film. A classic noseback-tail rise tips you off. It can be both exciting and frustrating trying to guess which way a cruising trout will move. (See “Sight Fishing,” California Fly Fisher, July/August 2018.) I have observed that trout will move quite a ways for Callibaetis nymphs, though, even chasing a moderate-speed retrieve with pauses imitating the rise and fall of these nymphs.
The alkaline soil in the drainage basins of many lakes throughout the West feeds weed forests that serve as tenement housing for Callibaetis nymphs. The alkaline geology extends from volcanic Lake Crowley north into the Cascade Range, the high desert lakes, and the Kamloops region in southern British Columbia. I have found cruising trout feeding on Callibaetis nymphs and emergers in the Owens River arm of Crowley and in massive numbers on the lower lake of the Twin Lakes in Mammoth. Go north to Frenchman Lake or Baum Lake for this fall phenomenon, and Oregon’s Diamond Lake also has prodigious hatches. Although Martis Lake near Truckee has been in decline, it has in the past had major Callibaetis hatches, in addition to its famous blood midge hatch. Sawmill Lake, a nearby pay-to-play impoundment, another thousand feet higher up and hence cooler in midsummer, has had Callibaetis and blood midge hatches, though they have gone through ups and downs, as happens at most lakes.
Favorite Callibaetis patterns are Mike Mercer’s Poxyback Callibaetis and the superbly tied Callibaetis nymphs by René Harrop. My “get their attention” fly is a weighted, size 12, picked-out, black AP Nymph. I also carry classic André Puyans soft-hackle-style emergers with ribbed, light greenish-gray bodies tied on size 14 or size 12 TMC 200R nymph hooks, with shades of gray and brown variegated partridge for the hackle collar. This is a great wind-drift pattern in the West and even in Great Britain, where stillwater fly fishing as we know it evolved and was refined. The pattern also works as an easy-to-cast trailer behind a Woolly Bugger. However, the fish in different lakes may prefer different Callibaetis nymph, emerger, and dun patterns, and what works in one lake may not work in another.
During fall midge emergences, fish show a decided preference for emerging midge pupae over the adult, but on occasion will take the adult resting on the meniscus. And of course, there is a wide variety of midges and hence of stillwater midge patterns. Throughout fall at Davis, we find small, almost fluorescent green midge pupae in stomach samples. These are imitated nicely by a size 16 green Copper John. Ralph Cutter’s Martis Midge, created for Martis Lake’s prolific blood midge hatches, is tied with two Krystal Flash strands protruding from the rear of the bugs’ abdomen like a shuck. The fly hangs in the water like an emerger, yet is easy to see fifty feet away because of its ample hackle up front.
My most successful pattern when fish are taking emerging midge pupae is a Craig Mathews’s Serendipity, tied on size 16 or size 14 scud-type hooks. Brown or blood-red Zelon is twisted tightly and wrapped from well into the hook bend up to near the eye. There, a small spun deer hair nose is trimmed into a tiny bullet head with flared hair tips as a wing pointed to the rear. Another fly to fish as a midge pupa imitation, if your friends aren’t watching, is a small San Juan Worm tied on a size 16 hook.
Sight fishing for stillwater trout with midge imitations is a bit different, because trout seem to move around more when after midge pupae, whereas fish that are after Callibaetis nymphs tend to cruise in more of a straight line, often slowly, though they’re not averse to suddenly reversing, then reversing again and doubling back or moving out of casting range.
During massive hatches, you might feel adult midges in your nostrils, hair, and ears, and possibly in your mouth. It is hard for fish to pick out your artificial fly among hundreds, if not thousands of naturals. One approach, where legal, is to use a point fly and two or three pupa imitations on the same leader. Another is to use a larger fly that will “plop” and attract attention.
The third members of our fall triad are ants and termites, and they are terrestrials, as opposed to aquatic insects. Where I fish, termites are more common in fall, but there are also many species of ants in forested middle-elevation and alpine areas. Both ants and termites produce mating flights whose purpose is the formation of a new colony. Columns of ants numbering in the thousands march from twig nests on the ground through grasslands to a tall tree, often a conifer, climb more than a hundred feet to the top, and then launch themselves following a fertile queen. Immense swarms can turn the sky into a silvery haze when sunlight reflects from their transparent wings.
Ants and termites don’t like inclement weather and aren’t great flyers. Not all the flying insects make it to the queen’s chosen place for a nest, and many end up in lakes and streams. Perhaps they launch and run out of gas, perhaps wind takes them over water, perhaps their navigation is faulty. At Webber Lake, a tight swarm seemed to drop out of the sky onto the water near us. It was probably half an acre in size and close to tall shoreline conifers, bringing in fish from all over to feed on the bonanza. But you don’t need a swarm overhead for the fish to key on these insects, My friends and I have successfully fished flying ant patterns on the slow-flowing section of the Williamson River above Chiloquin, Oregon even though there wasn’t a massive ant fall on our immediate area, but enough ants from a flight nearby ended up on the water that the fish keyed in quickly and seemed to lose much of their normal clear-water caution.
There are plenty of flying ant patterns from which to choose. At times, I’ve taken trout, as well as bass, on small black poppers or sliders, as well as on size 10 hackled carpenter ant patterns. These ties feature a bulky abdomen and thorax. Fish seem to be more selective when feeding on smaller ant patterns down to size 18 and when keying on termites, which have a slimmer profile and brown and earthtone body colors under their clear wings. The best patterns sit down in the water in a sideways tilt like the natural insect.
Callibaetis mayflies, midges, and ants and termites may be the major fall hatches for trout on still waters, but, damselflies and dragonflies often are about, too. The massive damselfly migrations of June are over, but a damselfly or dragonfly nymph imitation is often my choice for a searching fly anywhere in the West. Don’t forget generic patterns, either. One fishing partner’s favorite fly in the fall is an olive Woolly Bugger. He fishes it almost exclusively. Snail patterns also can produce. Their populations declined dramatically following the rotenone treatment to extirpate the pike at Davis, but their numbers are finally increasing there. Root beer, olive, or even the PowerBait colors pink and chartreuse seem to work. I like a buoyant snail imitation that will rise when a clear intermediate line is allowed to ground out after a cross-cove cast and very slow retrieve in shallow water. A leader at least 9 feet long or longer helps let the fly rise when the retrieve pauses. Takes can be very subtle.
Fall is an exciting and productive time to fish still waters. Sight-fishing possibilities, which for me are the zenith of stillwater fly fishing, abound. The summer doldrums finally are over, the trout are feeding with greater abandon, and fall at the lakes brings stillwater fly fishing back to life. It’s a great time to be on the water.
