Fry Patterns

As I’ve said in earlier postings, one of the most important hatches to imitate in our waters is the fry outmigration. In Puget Sound the Pink and Chum fry provide an important food source for Sea-Run cutthroat, and the King and Coho outmigrations can make for some excellent fishing in our coastal waters.

No where is this hatch as important as on Lake Quinault in spring. Always spawning in systems with a large lake, Sockeye Salmon are plankton feeders, and their plankton feeding, lake dwelling young are an important food source for adfluvial cutthroat and charr. When writing about Lake Quinault this past week it occurred to me the five things I value most in a fishery. Firstly my favorite fisheries all produce larger than average fish, that one is kind of a given. Secondly I like them to be wild fish, preferably trout or salmon. Thirdly I like to connect with some part of fly-fishing history, whether that means casting Cotton’s Green Drake on a spring creek or swinging a Glasso Spey on the Sol Duc, I just like to relive the fishing and flies of the masters and legends of our sport. In addition to these I like the fishery to be secluded, and lastly I like that fishery to provide a good deal of challenge. 

Fishing the fry hatch on Lake Quinault really hits on all five of these. There are days when I troll a grey ghost in an old row boat just like they used to in Maine. I catch wild trout, some of the charr reach 10 pounds, and some days I see more fish in hand than I do other anglers. However, it isn’t all peaches and cream. The early season on Lake Quinault often sees the lake high and dirty, and fish can be scattered, also, it takes a truly skilled oarsman to work the fly right in a 40 mile per hour headwind, which we see often on the Lake. 

As far as fly choice goes, you can’t go wrong with the old standards. Any of Carrie Stevens’ old trolling flies will do nicely. I especially love the Artula and the Wizard for our glacially green tinged fish. As for casting flies, Haig-Browns Silver Brown and a sparser version of his Silver Lady have always served me well. 

For those industrious fly tiers who wish to concoct their own dressings, you've got to start with a tinsel body. Floss bodies with tinsel rib work, but nothing beats a body of flat silver mylar tinsel. Any color matching lost in this body is well made up for in fish attracting flash. As for throats and tails, I usually omit the tail in a trolling fly, or use hackle barbules. The throat is important as it will contribute to the overall taper of the fly. Stevens used hackle barbules and bucktail. I usually omit the hackle barbules on the sparser dressings for sockeye fry, and I add a peacock herl collar for wing support.

The wing is what makes the fly go, so this should be an area that you put some thought into. For trolling flies I prefer hackle tips, tied rangeley style, and usually topped with Peacock Herl and Marabou. I use white saddle hackles the majority of the time, but have played around with olive, green, and blue with good results. The Supervisor, my original inspiration for this particular type of fly, uses blue hackle tips. For casting flies I use bucktail mostly, and also hen pheasant in Haig-Brown’s Silver Brown dressing. Mixing bucktail is a particularly intriguing prospect and I usually mix blue and green and a sparse bunch of white and tie that over a silver body. 

There is a myriad of ways to fish these flies, but I use three main techniques that have seemed to produce fish. The first is structure fishing. There is a lot of flooded timber and other submerged structure in Lake Quinault and you can get into some good cutthroat fishing if you fish your fry patterns on a fast strip right up against these. My favorite places are the pilings at the lower mouth, the flooded creek mouths on the south shore, and the huge driftwood cache near the upper mouth. On the latter area I fish my intermediate line and let it sink a good while. I find the other two areas much more easily fished from a boat with a floating line. 

When the structure just isn’t producing, or when the sun is high on the water I turn to fishing the dropoffs. Pretty much every part of Lake Quinault has a steep and sudden drop off and fish love to hold on these ledges. I usually wade out to my waist or until the drop off is in sight and cast in a half fan a pattern along the shore. This has turned up some large fish, which makes up for the mind numbing boredom that comes along with this type of fishing. I always use my intermediate line for this, and on the north shore I occasionally pull out my deep sinking line. When the weather gets hot it’s not uncommon for fish to hold 50 feet deep. Especially the cold loving charr. 

The real lure of the fry hatch is the opportunity to troll flies in that classic maine style. When the lake is high this water covering method is the most effective by far, and it is the only way to consistently take large charr from the lake. I like to have two rods out, each with a different pattern, with intermediate or fast sinking lines depending on the brightness of the day. I troll in curves, never a straight line, that way the flies rise and fall, dancing appetizingly behind my boat. The best part of the lake for this method of fishing is the north shore. That part of the lake also turns out the largest charr.