California has the most diverse fishing opportunities in the nation. There are high-Sierra tarns so clear that golden trout seem to fly in air, rather than swim through water, and then there is Clear Lake, which can get so unclear that it is easier to smell your way to a bloated carp an eighth of an inch under the surface than to see it. Some waters are so mineral-rich that your flyline gets caked in a white crust between casts, and others are so devoid of minerals that fish can barely survive. Despite the range in diversity, the two things that every California river and lake shares are cover and structure. If you can identify and properly utilize cover and structure, you are well on your way to becoming a more successful angler.
Structure is what makes the topography of a lake or streambed. A flat, featureless lake bed is still technically structure, it just isn’t very complex. The more complex the structure, the more it is likely to attract fish. About half a mile offshore of Tahoe City at the north end of Lake Tahoe, the flat and featureless gravel lake bed starts to tilt, spills its gravel, and reveals layer upon layer of basalt that flowed from vents and ultimately dammed the Truckee River and created the lake. The basalt is stratified like an exotic parfait, filled with cracks, pocks, overhanging ledges, and caves: complex structure at its best.
Anglers in the know target this very narrow band of complex structure between the sterile gravel flats and the fishless deep, dark depths. It’s where the action is, and with a small boat, even fly fishers can share in the fun. Structure ranges from rock outcrops, shallow back bays, and steep cliff faces all the way to inundated man-made artifacts such as old road beds, coffer dams, and ruts created by boat hulls and props.
Cover is the stuff that overlays structure. Cover can range from ice shelves, to aquatic vegetation, to boat docks, to discarded car bodies. Compared with bass anglers, trout fishers are woefully ignorant regarding the nature and potential of structure. We universally call aquatic vegetation “weeds.” Bass anglers describe the same weeds by their true identity and can quantify what species of vegetation growing in what kind of situation will provide the best cover. Bass anglers have game plans for various kinds of cover, but just about every trout fisher I know just makes a few cast at the cover and moves to the next spot.
Bass anglers are not afraid to retrieve their patterns across horizontal cover. Lily pads and floating mats of vegetation are an open invitation to running a frog imitation across the top. A fly fisher’s weedless deer hair or foam mouse sliding over mats can be as effective as any plastic frog bait. Don’t be afraid to plop a jig into holes in the weed mats or right through the lily pads.
Vertical cover, such as dense cattails, rushes, and pond weed also makes a great target where their stands abruptly stop and denote a sudden change in depth or perhaps in bottom type. Fish a streamer or damselfly nymph tight along the wall of stems. Start high in the water column and make a few more casts, fishing each one slightly deeper than the last.
To prevent needless snags, weed-proof your flies by leaving a very long tag end on the knot tied to the eye of the fly. Next, find a small plastic tube (a coffee stirrer stick or the tube inside an ink pen, for example). Slip a small section of that tube over the hook point and around the bend. Finally, take the tag end of that knot, shove it back through the eye of the fly, and jam it into the tube. Nearly any fly can be made “weedless” (OK — sort of weed resistant) in the field with this technique.
Use 15-pound stiff monofilament so that you can pull up clots of weed. Don’t go much heavier than 15 pounds, because you don’t want to approach the breaking strength of your fly line. If the water is a bit muddy or stained, try Fireline or Spiderwire for your entire leader. It takes a bit of getting used to, but lobbing (flipping) the fly or using a Belgian swing (casting in an oval, rather than back and forth) and keeping constant tension on the fly during the cast will keep the limp braid from tangling. The weight of the fly will turn it over. The beauty of skinny braided lines is that they usually slice through weeds, rather than collect them. If you get stuck, pump the rod and allow the braid to saw itself free.
This is the year for developing your cover-fishing skills. Nearly all of our lakes have been at low pool for the last four years. Vegetation that grew right down to the edge of the low lakes is now covered by water and being utilized by fish and bait. Over the past few months, Lisa and I have been fishing Northern California reservoirs, and the amount of new cover is astounding. As an extreme example, we were casting to brush poking out of the water at Bullards Bar Reservoir. As the boat drifted into the brush, the fish finder showed us to be in 28 feet of water! The “brush” was actually the tops of 30-foot cottonwood trees, and fish were holding in branches that normally held birds.
Taking a card from crappie anglers, we tied off to the trees and jigged weighted nymphs down them. We’d start shallow, jig a few times, then let out another five feet, jig a bit, and work our way to the lake bed. When fishing trees in shallower water, we tossed flies as far as possible under the low-hanging branches. The best approach for these conditions is a skip cast, where you deliver the cast sidearm and drive the fly at about a 30-degree angle to the water, just at the edge of the branches. If all goes well, the fly skips off the water and sails low and deep under the branches. It is inevitable that the fly will sometimes get hung up in the branches. We used a stiff 15-pound Maxima on the flies that is very resistant to tying itself in knots around branches, the way a lighter and softer leader would. With a steady, gentle pull, we could usually get the Maxima to unwrap itself and drop the fly back to the water.
I don’t know if an undercut bank fits the definition of cover or structure. It seems to be a blend of both, but either way, trout don’t care. Most people throw at an undercut bank, when the better way is to swim your fly parallel to it. Stand in the water and cast well upstream, but as close as possible to the undercut. Mend line along the undercut, and the fly will follow the line. Yes, trout don’t normally like a fly line mended a foot or so from them, but fish hiding in undercuts seem to be the exception. It might be that they can’t readily see the line, or perhaps they feel so secure in an undercut that they don’t care.
Another tricky way to fish an undercut bank is to stand upstream of it. As your fly drifts downstream, mend your line up onto the bank behind the cut. The line will hang up on the grass, and the fly will swing into the cut. And a log in the river lying parallel with the bank will usually have the gravel on its streamside excavated by the current. Trout love undercut logs. Fish it like a cut bank.
Day in and day out, I think the most overlooked cover is a swirl of bubbles. Whether the bubbles are creating a foam mat atop the water or swirling around making white water, trout will always exploit them. Fish bubble swirls hard. For the very reason that trout like bubbles (it obscures them), you can walk right up to fish and remain invisible. Your fly, too, can be hard for them to see, so make repeated drifts to be sure you have given your fish an eyeful and a potential mouthful.
