After reading Capt. G’s post on the bix flex flies, I just wanted to add some more options for big flies for big fish. I’m anxious to tie up some of those flex sardines but figured I’d show some big flies we’ve been using on big lake trout.
Four out of the last 5 summers I’ve made a trip up to Wellesley Lake in Canada’s Yukon Territory. We stay at Brian Dack’s Kluane Wilderness Lodge (
Home Page ) which is the only lodge on this fly-in lake. The lake is clock full of big lake trout and northern pike. The lakers probably average in the 6 to 8# range, with lots of bigger ones. The fishing is all catch and release except for a small number kept for a couple shore lunches each week. The conventional fishermen get lots of lake trout in the 30s, a decent number of 40s, and there are usually a few 50s caught each summer. We especially like the place since there are no guides and you can do your own thing, fish conventional, fly, whatever. In late June and early July there is also 24 hours of daylight so you can fish all you want. This past summer we finally started to figure out how to get some of the bigger fish to eat the flies. We had gotten few previously, but nothing consistent until this past summer. Ticket seemed to be the bigger flies, but fished in a different location from where we normally spent our time.
Here’s a nice midnight view of the lake from the lodge’s deck.
The lake trout feed on smaller lake trout and pike, ciscos (a sardine sized baitfish), and lake whitefish that get up to 10#. They have big mouths and bigger appetites as you can see by this picture.
Brian fishes almost every day and he has his best luck on the big Lakers using big swimbaits like Fish Traps, and especially the big 7” Tora Tubes by Canyon Plastics. The Tora Tubes are really giant Gitzits.
He targets the fish tight to the bottom and stays in that 35 to 60’ zone using leadcore trolling line. His tactics are deadly. He trolls very slowly bouncing the bottom and when he sees a meter mark right on the bottom, he takes the outboard out of gear and jigs. Here’s a few pics from one of the nights we fished with him last summer including a pic of a 40+ caught by my friend Al. In one of the pics you can see the big Tora Tube sticking out of the mouth.
While going out and fishing that heavy gear is fun, I much prefer to catch these fish on fly tackle. We fish 8 weight outfits, with 12# or 16# tippets, and we finally started zeroing in on how to catch the bigger fish on flys this past summer. We’ve had luck with integrated shooting lines like Teeny 300 grain but we’ve done best using a 27 foot length of Rio T-14 or Cortland L-13 followed by a 100 foot intermediate running line. We started looking for some bigger flies a couple years back. My friend Rick went to Grace who ties flies at His and Hers Flyshop in Costs Mesa. Rick brought in a fishtrap and asked for a fly that would act as a substitute for a Fishtrap. Grace really thinks outside the box and isn’t afraid to try some crazy stuff if you throw ideas at her. She came up with what she called a Texas Leach which was about 6” long and made out of magnum rabbit strips. She tied about a 4 inch length of magnum rabbit strip in back at the bend of the hook, then wrapped the shank with cross cut rabbit, then tie in a 3 inch piece of magnum rabbit near the eye of the hook. You can add some flash before adding the rabbit and the addition of a cone head or barbell eyes really gave it a good jigging action. It’s heavy when wet but the rabbit really has some killer action in the water. Colors we’ve had luck with are black, orange, white, yellow, and purple, plus various combinations of these colors. While Grace’s flies were about 6 inches long, I made up a bunch for this last summer that were in the 9 to 11 inch range. They are really quick to tie and work great. Here’s a couple picks of the flies.
We’ve always had good luck with articulated flies out of rabbit. I believe these are steelhead or salmon patterns from Alaska. We found a how-to-tie write-up for a triple articulated fly at an Alaskan flyfishing website that gave us a much bigger articulated leech.
Alaska Flyfishing Patterns - Triple Threat Articulated Leech Fly Pattern for Alaska Rainbow Trout, Northern Pike, Steelhead & Dolly Varden Fishing
Only change we made were snipping off the front two hooks. These flys worked great and were 7 to 9 inches long also. They worked great but they do take quite a bit longer to tie than the Texan Leeches. Here’s a selection of double and triple articulateds that Grace tied up at His and Hers Flyshop.
This year we were able to get some fish off the bottom using the leadcore shooting head systems while drifiting. It was really hard to stay down deep with the flies in that zone for long though. What we found is that under certain conditions the lakers are up on the surface out in deeper water chasing around the lake whitefish and ciscos when they are schooled up. These were the fish we got to eat our big flies this past summer. I think we ended up with between 8 and 10 fish this year that went over 20# on flies, including a 24.5# and a twoe at 26.5#. If you look in the IGFA book you''ll see that those big ones are pushing into record size.
I think G's flexidine would work too since the lake is also full of ciscos which is a sardine size bait fish. I’m also sure those fish on the surface would eat those big hard trout baits the bass guys throw. Here’s are some of the bigger fish we caught and released on the big rabbit flies.
I’m really looking forward to getting back up there again on July 1st. Fun stuff!! Keep those ideas for flies coming.
Jim
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