Just getting back to civilization after the trip. The story goes that Wednesday evening through friday morning was the best calibaetis hatch I’ve ever fished. Conditions were glass calm with sunny clear skies and the mayfly abundance was pretty insane by my standards with basically 3 bite windows. Breakfast lunch and dinner. We camped at cinder hill campground and I never had to leave to find great fishing. In fact I didn’t even need a boat whatsoever if all I wanted to do was fish calibaetis as I was often casting to cruising and sipping fish in only a foot of water with my feet only wet so my flyline wasn’t on the rocks. The fish were sometimes very picky and demanded the right fly. I caught fish with all phases, emergers, cripples, duns and spinners at different times. Tying on the right fly at the right moment usually meant an eat on the first cast. It was a total blast. The weather changed Friday evening and a little wind kicked up and clouds came in and the hatch didn’t materialize that evening and Saturday morning it was still very much dead with very very few bugs and the flats were nearly empty. All good I had my fun.
The dry fly fishing was too big of an ask for all the young kids in our camp so I loaded the drift boat up with 2 or 3 at a time in shifts and deployed the sinking lines and even a gear rod and rapala to troll around. By far the most productive setup was an olive micro leech with a calibaetis nymph trailed behind it trolled on a type 5. Rods were steadily burying and kids were hooting and hollering. They managed to catch Kokanee, rainbows and browns steadily with the hotspots being 15-20’ FOW off the edges of the big flats. No love trolling the rock ledges or over the abyss. From East lake resort to cinder hill was good enough to not need to explore further. Biggest brown for the kids was 21” but we broke off a fish we never saw that was heavy, stayed down and wouldn’t come near the boat. Would have liked to know what that was.
As far as fishing dries, most fish were 14-18” and nearly all rainbow, my best one might have been 20”. I did break off a brown in the 20-22” class in a clump of weeds and that was the first and last time I stepped down to 5x. I talked to one guy fishing 6x on a 15’ leader and he must have had a big box of flies that he hated lol. I found 9’ 4x to be just fine.
All in all it was a great family camping experience. Everyone loved the lake and lots of great memories were made. Most of the great grip and grin photos I have aren’t of my own kids so I won’t post them. But here are a couple to prove we were there.
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This one was very challenging to hook, it was cruising in only a foot of water and changed direction a billion times before I finally put the fly in its path. The big beak breaking the surface made me think it was bigger than it was. Hard fighting fish however.
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Typical fish. This was during a window around 1 where I probably landed 20 fish and every one on a size 16 purple parawulff casting from shore. I think I got one on 5 straight casts. With the sun glare, slight ripple and beer buzz I went double dry with the parawulff up top so I could have one fly I could actually see. Turns out the fish went nuts for it. Never had another eat on that fly again after that but for a moment it was magic lol.
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The last morning just before putting it back on the trailer. Glad I brought it. Thanks Oregon. We had a good time.
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