Trout in shallow water are naturally spooky, and great caution is required when casting to them under these conditions. A trout is chased by all kinds of predators from the day he hatches (even before, for that matter), and even when he's grown to a size where his only enemies are ospreys and man, he retains that legendary shyness that has made him such a classy game fish. These fish seem especially attuned to attack from above, and that's how your fly line landing on the water will be perceived. Sometimes just the shadow of your line will do it. Think of it this way: a trout follows a single rule when there's any undue disturbance on the surface of shallow water-"hide."
Fly tackle has improved considerably since 1676, when Charles Cotton advised anglers to"fish fine and far off," but no one has ever improved on that statement. When working the shallows of a high country lake, stay as far from the fish as your casting ability allows, and fish a long, fine leader.
Under the most difficult conditions (very spooky fish in very clear, still water), the ideal situation would be for the fisherman to be well back from the bank throwing a cast where the line lands on the ground and only the leader strikes the water.
If what's behind you on shore doesn't allow for this, you might want to get into the water a little way down the bank and cast parallel to shore, but make sure that you're not wading into a pod of fish in that spot. In other words, where you're casting from can be just as important as where you're casting to.
That's an extreme case, but if you fish the high lakes often enough, you'll sooner or later come on just such a situation. The other extreme one you'll also probably come upon sooner or later is where the fish don't seem to care about you, your fly line, or anything else, and you'll be getting strikes almost at your feet. This kind of situation is most likely to happen with brook trout (little ones at that), sometimes with cutthroats, rainbows, or grayling, and seldom (one might even say never) with goldens. Nine times out of ten, you'll find yourself somewhere in between.
In the still, shallow waters of a high country lake, I'll usually fish a leader that's no shorter than nine or ten feet with a tippet no heavier than 5x. Sometimes I'll go as light as 7x, although a friend has suggested that you don't need to go that light. He may be right. The difference in diameter between 5x and 7x leader is only about two thousandths of an inch, while the difference in breaking strength is significant somewhere between one and two pounds of test. It's a good argument, but I've been in too many spots where stepping down leader size seemed to be the key to success, so I still do it. I also seem to do better if I use smaller flies in these situations unless I'm trying to match a specific bug that I think the fish are feeding on.
As I mentioned before, if there's a chop on the water your chances of spotting fish are greatly decreased, but there's also an advantage to this situation: a little bit of a riffle will cover your cast better and allow you to get away with being a little closer and using a heavier tippet and larger fly.
Fishing writers have long been fond of attributing specific personality traits to the different species of trout, but, although there is definitely some merit to this approach, I believe the environment plays a very large part in determining how a trout will act. Many high country lakes are rather sparsely populated with food organisms when compared with, say, a Pennsylvania spring creek, and the growing season is typically short. This means that a fish has to be an aggressive and opportunistic feeder to be successful.
It's true that golden trout, as a rule, tend to be the shyest of the high country fish, that brookies and grayling tend to be the most aggressive and the most open to suggestion (the most likely to race four feet to grab a Royal Coachman, for instance), and that the cutts and rainbows will usually fall somewhere in between. Still, I think it's fair to say that all of these fish, when they're found in the high mountain lakes, tend to be opportunistic rather than selective feeders.
This is why so many of the good high lake fishermen I know do the majority of their business with nondescript wet fly or nymph patterns of the Hares Ear or Zug Bug variety. Most of the high lake fish can be fooled into grabbing a #12 Hares Ear Soft Hackle, even if they happen to be feeding on something entirely different at the time, because it looks alive and, thus, good to eat.
The wet fly has the further advantage of being down at the fish's level (assuming it's fished at the proper depth) so the fish doesn't have to expend a lot of energy to take it. The decision to rise to the surface seems to be a hard one for a trout to make unless there's a lot of insect activity on top of the water.
Still water nymph and wet fly tactics can vary greatly, and that's another advantage they have over dries. You can fish at a variety of depths and with various speeds and styles of retrieve, some combination of which will often do the trick.
© Article copyright Pruett Publishing.
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