Flat Water Char

Arriving at the launch, I peered across the mirror reflection of the distant hills on flat water. Rich hues of goldenrod shown crisp on the glass-slick surface; sulfur lupine and arrowleaf balsamroot dappling the landscape beyond. The high desert lake was tinged emerald green from spring phytoplankton productivity. The saccharine aroma of antelope bitterbrush bloom thickened the air. Fish were rising eagerly under an overcast sky. Big fish. Dimpling and porpoising. A midge hatch.

Midges (also known as Chironomids) are small aquatic insects that hatch into non-biting flies, some resembling mosquitoes. They range in size from smaller than a grain of white rice to that of something around a size 12 dry fly. Midge hatches can be notoriously painful to fish under the penetrating scrutiny of a fussy rainbow or brown trout. These species will key into the very specific, tiny larvae and adults, readily snubbing any fly pattern, especially a dry fly. Productive desert lakes can spew blanket midge hatches, and if the stars align, epic fly fishing in the ambiguously literal sense of the word.

Fortunately, my buddy Chas and I were seeking brook trout in central Washington State on the Colville Indian Reservation. Brookies are a member of the char family, genus Salvelinus, and native to eastern North America, but are stocked in some isolated lakes in the Pacific Northwest. Their western native cousins are the Dolly Varden, bull trout, and arctic char. Lake trout or mackinaw are also in the char family. The beauty of char species is that they generally exhibitaggressive attitudes with larger, older fish possessing piscivorous feeding tendencies. Brook trout are often more of a feeding generalist in comparison, and in the lower 48, they are typically the smallest of the species. Therefore, dry flies and small nymphs can be quite effective, but specific waterbodies can have a say in what works.

As the morning bloomed, water temperature crept into the mid-50s, Fahrenheit, and the hatch exploded. Adult flies surfaced en masse, the dimpling rises progressed to boiling, then slashing. Fish moved in shallow, cruising the rocky shorelines, zealously picking off flies. A shallow cove speckled with aquatic vegetation harbored dozens of fiercely feeding trout. Fish were busting repeatedly in open water, breaching like whales. We had this in the bag!

Chas is strictly a western-style fly fisherman, so we started with our western gear to feel out the situation, my tenkara rod prepped in the wings. Rummaging through fly boxes, we finally landed on a large, gray, adult midge imitation. Chas laid out the first cast to a distant rise, which was met with a dignified turn of the nose as if the fly had a putrid odor. I followed up and was met with a similar repugnance, failing to dupe what should have been indiscriminately frenzied fish.

Further rummaging through hundreds of flies led to countless failed attempts on the surface.

Utterly shocked, we began to reconsider everything we know about brook trout. “Since when does a brookie inspect the fly, nose it, then deny it? You would think these were tailwater browns!” Chas remarked as we watched, slack-jawed, surrounded by carnage. There were two remaining options to explore, so I reached for my tenkara rod.

I can preach dry-fly/dropper nymph combos all day long for any rod set up, including fixed-line fly fishing, tenkara style.

Although thoroughly disappointed in the highway robbery of what should have been epic dry fly action, we were still confident in the back-up option of dropping a size 18 midge nymph below a large indicator fly. With my goto elk hair caddis to keep the nymph up, I tied up a red bead-head nymph with a silver rib and set the nymph about eighteen inches below the dry fly on a 5X tippet. For any other species, I would never consider larger than 6X tippet in this situation, but let’s be honest, these were brook trout. On principle, I was willing to call it a day if tippet size was a deal breaker.

With a soft flip of the rod, the flies laid out delicately. I knew the action wouldn’t be immediate as cruising fish had to spot the nymph, but I was confident.

Gawking wildly at Chas, green with envy, he stripped in fourteen to eighteen-inch brookies while I sat stubbornly, tenkara rod in hand. As I photographed, Chas netted an eighteen-incher, smirking at my plight, but overwhelming panic struck with the cognizance that my caddis had gone missing. A soft pop of the rod for good measure set the tiny midge hook firmly into the snout of a robust fourteen-incher, and the fight ensued.

I had yet to experience a decent fish on my tenkara rod and was abruptly impressed with the shock absorption of the noodle-soft blank. These were strong fish, but brookies don’t typically make the hard runs of a rainbow. In this case, the fixed line was no hindrance. Keeping the rod high and deeply flexed provided enough rod travel to manage the most valiant escape efforts. Ultimately, the fish succumbed to the relentless action of the rod.

In my experience, lake brookies are never as impressively colored as stream brookies, but there is a peculiar attractiveness about large, cream-colored spots scattered haphazardly cross a drab, almost gray dorsal canvas. Some fish were more colorful than others, boasting a muted orange belly and faintly classic pink and blue speckles. And of course, my favorite characteristic, the stark-white fin spines identifying the char species.

I continued to fish the tenkara rod until the hatch tapered off, landing a handful of similar sized fish, while Chas raked them in wholesale. As the action waned, we went for broke. I set the tenkara road aside for a failsafe lake tactic. A deep sinking fly line and a special little streamer that Chas and I tie. We motored to a sheer shoreline dropping onto a shelf that sloped from twelve to over twenty feet. We sank the streamers down to about ten feet, then stripped at random intervals. My first hook-up produced a brookie breaching twenty inches and about three pounds; the beginning of a furious hour of “toad-sticking”, but that’s a story for another publication.