his should go without saying, but the more time you spend on the water, the likelier it is that you will come across extraordinary phenomena that will put you in the proverbial “bucket” — that place, that time, when fish are biting like crazy because of an unexpected change in feeding behavior. Such frenzies are likeliest to occur when food items suddenly appear in great numbers. It is something to behold and take advantage of, assuming buck fever hasn’t caused you to fumble your flies into the breeze and drop your rod into the lake.
This concept, which I suppose can be summarized as “with increasing experience comes rare experiences,” was first impressed upon me when I lived in the Bay Area and was invited to dine with the Tri-Valley Fly Fishers in Livermore. The legendary Dee Thomas was to speak that evening on bass fishing. Dee was the first California pro bass angler to go east and win the Bass Master’s Classic. That fishing contest is the Super Bowl of tournament bass fishing. His win knocked their world askew. Dee did it using the “tule dipping” technique: long conventional rods, a heavy line and leader, and penetrating, weighted rubber-legged jigs. The Southern boys didn’t like being beaten by a Californian. His win was the reason why conventional rods were limited in tournament use to 7 feet 11 inches and why early competition fly rods for bass, with their heavy butts and larger guides, came on the market at that length.
Dee knew that I and several others at that table in the back room of Cattleman’s Restaurant were hooked on fly fishing for bass. His first question, after our drinks arrived, was, “How many days a year do you fish?” If you weren’t fishing for bass at least 50 days annually, Dee didn’t consider you to be very advanced.
Why? You simply hadn’t been out on the water enough to witness, understand, and incorporate into your angling some of the seemingly magical phenomena that happen in the aquatic environment. Fly anglers occasionally witness events where huge numbers of bugs hatch in a relatively small amount of time and fish go absolutely nuts. If you have fished a heavy Callibaetis hatch, a Blood Midge emergence, or an ant fall, I hope that you realized that you were participating in one of nature’s amazing phenomena. You weren’t on the planet, you were in it.
I have fished on days when I thought I wasn’t finding fish because there weren’t any, only to stumble on such a phenomenon and see literally hundreds, and possibly thousands of fish in the same place. It often leads to sight-fishing opportunities, casting to specific fish. I wouldn’t put it up there with visions, religious experiences, and out-of-body happenings, though it is close and can leave your hands shaking and your psyche in a strange state. If you are on the water a lot, or if you are just lucky, you may have experienced one of these phenomena. It’s even possible to put yourself in the way of experiencing them.
About a decade ago I headed over to a favorite lake at 11 in the morning, which meant my expectations for a top-water bite or any success at all weren’t very high. Still, it was a nice day, and being on the water and getting exercise in a float tube sure beat working at my desk. I fished shoreline cover for an hour with no takes and decided to probe the opposite shore of the same long inlet cove, looking for bits of residual morning shade. After two huge fish hit on consecutive casts, I knew that a top-water bite of some consequence was on. Two more fish in as many casts followed, including one that I thought might be a record, and my hands were shaking. Briefly I thought of weighing the big one on a certified scale, but instead released the largest top-water bass of my angling life and just drifted in the water for minutes, contemplating what I had witnessed and experienced. Something said, “Don’t be greedy.”
On reflection, I realized I had been in the mother of all top-water bites. I quit fishing and slowly kicked back to my launch point, cracked a cold beer, and stupidly got in my truck and drove away, still in a state of disorder — and possibly grace — from my experience, not mindful of the 25-mile-per-hour gated-community speed limit and the beer on my console. Flashing lights told me I was in trouble. “I’m going to get a DUI,” I thought. I crammed the beer between the console and seat and pulled over. The private security officer was nice, and he let me off for going 3 miles an hour over the limit.
On another adventure, this time to Northern California’s Indian Valley Reservoir, my partner and I started by tossing streamers on sinking lines and retrieving through a flat of partially submerged sycamore trees. This approach had worked in the past. On one cast, Loren’s leader snagged a limb, and his fly dangled two feet out of the water. Suddenly, a fish exploded upward into the air and repeatedly went after the dangling fly. “It’s an omen,” Loren said. “It’s time for bass bugs.” At one point, there was a loud splash behind us. Loren had let his back cast fly over his right shoulder without looking. It landed in an indentation between two flooded manzanita bushes, and a large bass leapt at it. I put my rod down, again cracked a beer, and just watched for a while. We finished the day shaking, too, because nearly every tree stump or sunken bush for the next hour had held a sizeable fish.
These experiences come rarely. However, there are phenomena that we might be astute enough to recognize and be prepared to capitalize on. These include insect swarms, huge insect hatches, and concentrations of other protein sources.
Insect swarms can’t be predicted, but it pays to carry a few imitations of swarming insects to take advantage of the phenomenon if you encounter it. This spring, on a late-evening weather broadcast, the screen showed a radar image thought initially to be unseasonal, out-of-place rain. It proved to be a monumental flight of ladybugs headed somewhere out to sea in the San Diego area. Ladybugs hatch in swarms and draw fish in freshwater lakes. A beetle box can cover fly needs if you are fortunate enough to come across this phenomenon. Bees and yellow jackets also swarm at times, and some wind up in the water. A few patterns in your lake boxes can be all you need when this happens.
Water boatmen emergences are more common and easier to find. At Lake Davis, shallower bays that anglers don’t often visit experience these hatches. I’ve also found them in alpine lakes with lily pads, and fish see the bugs often enough that they feed opportunistically. Toss a boatman fly three or four feet ahead of a cruising fish that has rejected something else. A major emergence, though, is another thing, often localized, and will bring feeding frenzies. Fish know the bugs are about and cruise looking for them. My boatmen patterns are in with the beetles.
Ant and termite swarms are more predictable and bring larger feeding events. Single ant flies are always worth trying, too, whether in moving or stillwater situations, hatch or no hatch. They work well on selective fish, fished wet or dry. I remember a fishless two hours on the Henrys Fork Railroad Ranch water. After many fly changes, and resting the water, a change to a hi-vis size 16 ant brought two magnificent trout to net. It made my day. The hi-vis pattern has a white, pink, or fluorescent green post for visibility. A brown hackle is wound horizontally in parachute style between a dubbed abdomen and thorax. It allows the ant to float low in the water, as the naturals do.
Mating swarms or ant falls are bigtime phenomena. Entire coves, even acres of open water, can experience thousands of ants or cinnamon termites and commensurate numbers of trout. On mid-elevation lakes, a mix of smallmouths, largemouths, rainbows, and browns will feed on ants — more reason to carry a well-stocked ant box. I’ve added gradually to my box and carry darker patterns down to size 18, including size 10 carpenter ant patterns and a few small black antlike poppers for panfish. Lake Siskiyou is known for its June ant hatches and top-water smallmouth bite. It’s more of an April/May event on Scott’s Flat Reservoir.
Several years ago, friends and I were returning from midday exploration in the Chiloquin, Oregon, area of Williamson River fame. As we approached our host ranch owner’s property, we saw a grayish haze in the distance and wondered if there was smoke from the many fires that year. Closer examination showed it to be millions of ants. The haze was sunlight reflecting off translucent ant wings. Our host walked us across one of his pastures and showed us where ants, marching in columns, found and climbed up tall trees, often conifers, and then launched along with the queen on mating flights. He said, “It happens every year.”
The Hexagenia hatch at Lake Almanor is a mega hatch and brings in many species of fish. You can catch a smallmouth on one cast, then a rainbow, brown, largemouth, or crappie. Lake Davis is experiencing Hex hatches of increasing magnitude.
A less known and less predictable phenomenon is a crawfish molt. My dad and I were camped close to the water at Almanor. After sunset, I walked to the lakeside in near darkness to rinse some dishes. The cove’s surface was torn apart the way you see when tossing pellets at a hatchery. Dorsal fins coursed in all directions. Every bass and trout for a long way was in that cove. The hardest part of fishing something like this is getting a fish to pick your imitation out of hundreds, if not thousands of the real deal.
My late friend, author/angler Jim Cramer, and I were on the west side of Lake Davis taking a lunch break. A very discombobulated young guy ran up and asked if he could buy some flies. It turned out he had stumbled into a huge damselfly hatch at Cow Creek. He was new to fly fishing and described what he had seen and heard as “bowling balls falling out of the sky.” Try as he might, his Long’s Drug Store flies didn’t take a fish, even if they were going mad in front of him. We gave him some flies and realized that he would be a fly fisher the rest of his life.
The damselfly hatch at Davis is predictable enough that friends from the Tri-Valley Fly Fishers and the Gold Country Fly Fishers try year after year to hit it sometime in June. We usually catch fish, though the angling can be challenging. It’s the huge damselfly hatches there that keep us coming back. You know something is going on when you see hundreds of gulls, terns, herons, egrets, blackbirds, and occasionally crows lined up on points, waiting for the nymphs to swim in their unique sinusoidal way toward shore. Throw a few predatory dragonflies into the mix.
Damselflies hatch throughout the spring, summer, and into the fall, and their patterns are always worth fishing, but the huge hatches seem to come as surface water temperatures rise into the upper 60s and approach 70. Fish cruise slowly, a few feet or more down in cooler water, rise to take nymphs in the warmer surface water, then quickly move back down to the cooler layer. On one frustrating occasion, it seemed as if the fish would take the nymphs only when they could gobble two or three at a time. I stood in my pram and tried bonefish tactics with a two-fly, then a three-fly trace. You had to have line stripped out and ready and make one back cast, then shoot accurately, leading your target, only there was no Bahamian guide shouting “60 feet at 10 o’clock, mon.” Does that work all the time? No, but often enough it does, and you return to camp with a glow inside. It’s like the feeling after throwing a one-hitter or a tennis set with no unforced errors.
Fishing before and after these huge damselfly hatches can be tough. The same is true for huge caddis pupae and Blood Midge emergences. These phenomena can offer spectacular sight fishing, as is occasionally found with damselfly hatches. Where? For midge pupae, I look to the slow water on Putah Creek, the west side of Lake Davis, Crystal Point at Frenchman Lake, and some private still waters. These hatches can be cyclical, but vary year to year. We’re not seeing hatches at Martis Creek Lake like they were in the early glory days, but as Dee Thomas said, you’ve got to be on the water a lot.
I mentioned other protein sources as causing the sort of phenomena that I’ve been discussing, and I can’t finish without mentioning baitfish concentrations. Lake Berryessa offers autumn possibilities for trout feeding on schools of threadfin shad. Look for foggy days around Thanksgiving and carry binoculars. Birds are a sign. Go well into coves before you head elsewhere. Favorite places: Markley Cove, Wragg Canyon, The Narrows, and Skier’s Cove. Don’t forget Shasta Lake in the winter and New Melones Reservoir in March. On an early spring visit there, we found schools of threadfin shad driven to the top in a cove. Just as with the crawfish event at Almanor, we caught rainbows, browns, bass, and crappies, but using threadfin patterns that matched the size of the baitfish. New Hogan Lake also has stripers and shad. Every once in a while, bass corral the baitfish, and a feeding frenzy starts. Approach slowly and quietly and hope some idiot doesn’t run a boat in under power and put the fish down.
Discovery Bay is another place where you can find this phenomenon. The fishing can be slow one day and hot the next. Of some 50 or so “bay’s” there, fewer than 10 produce the best fishing. It depends on tides, water temperatures, cloud cover. We work docks and other structure, the backs of coves or bays, intersections of tidal current, and openings into bigger water, always looking . . . then suddenly birds are squawking and you could do an Audubon New Year’s bird count. Egrets and herons wait on rooftops, then dive into the water as striped bass drive flopping, frantic threadfin shad onto the shore, against riprap, or into the back of a cove. You know it’s really going when barking dogs and cats leap down the banks trying to get a fish meal.
It may be over in a minute or two, sometimes before you are in casting range, and then suddenly reappear a hundred yards away. Multiple rods should be rigged and ready. A hookup can be on a 6-pounder, or it can be on a 20-poundplus fish. You may never witness this phenomenon, but I can guarantee that it won’t happen for you if you are at home watching a football game.
