HUNTING FISHING For fishing high lakes, be sure to carry a selection of ant patterns in various sizes and colors, such as (left to right from second fly) a foam grey-bodied ant with orange hackle, foam black ant with red hackle, classic fur-bodied black ant and a fur-bodied winged black ant. Honorable mention goes to Wulff flies (far left), which though attractors, sometimes appeal to fish looking for ants to eat. (DAVID JOHNSON)
Timber, Trout And Tasty Ants Ant patterns should be your go-to choice when fly fishing the Northwest’s subalpine mountain lakes in summer. By David Johnson
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ummer fishing trips to mountain lakes promise fly anglers great scenery, camping under the stars, cooler weather than lower-elevation fisheries and the hope of lots of hungry trout. But like any fishing trip, occasionally the fishing slows. Even more irritating, you might see a series of rises from a single fish cruising along the shoreline within casting distance. You cast to them but the fish blow off your offering. The fish are eating something. You step onto a log at the water’s edge and look into the clear water in hopes of spotting what’s on the menu.
But there’s nothing there. Even more irritating, you have to keep squishing ants that are crawling from the log up your pants. There are a lot of ants and they are an annoying distraction from your efforts to figure out what the fish are eating. Exactly. Although ant imitations are in most anglers’ fly boxes, they are seldom the first fly tied on. But if you are fishing mountain lakes this summer, ants should move up in your batting order.
TROUT EAT ANTS for the same reason terrestrials typically interest trout: ants are larger than aquatic insects, so the energy they provide to a trout rising to the surface to feed is much larger
than that provided by, say, a mosquito. Ants are also more or less helpless in the water, so they are easy to catch. In mountain lakes with relatively nutrient-poor water and short growing seasons, trout that want to survive can’t ignore such a valuable resource. Ant imitations do not work equally well on all lakes. The characteristics of a lake that make ants a good choice include: • Lakes below or on the edge of the treeline. Most “carpenter” ants live on woody debris, so lakes surrounded by trees will have more ants than waters high above treeline. Trout that see ants regularly are more likely to focus on looking for ants. • Wilderness lakes. Lakes surrounded by forests that have not been logged or
nwsportsmanmag.com | AUGUST 2022
Northwest Sportsman 89
