100 Mile House area Sept/Oct, which patterns?
Greeetings.

I have 10 days in 100 Mile Sept/Oct. I plan to camp out with a small boat and fish for bows. Any suggestions on patterns/presentation would be gratefully received.

Thanks,
Fred.
p.s. The first thing I almost always try is a Doc Spratley, trolled slow at various depths.

Fred
I'd certainly bring some green, bead-headed whooley buggers, some leeches, shrimp and most importantly, some dragonfly nymphs.
Good luck.

Fred I would use nymph patterns in black.Trolled medium speed for success. I go up every spring and fall around the sheridan and bridge lake area and always have great luck on a #10 black bead head wooly bugger. Horse hair nymphs do well also. good luck

Fred, I fished up at Spout Lake in May which is just after ice off and September/October is close enough to ice on that I think what we caught fish on will be successful. After trolling with very limited success, we found what our friends were using to be the best. They were using a black rooster tail. They trolled as slow as possible, with full sink lines.

Spout lake is about a half hour drive northeast from 108 mile house (on back roads, and on a class 4/5 trail, so you need a good 4x4), and its very secluded. Theres only one lodge on the lake and the campsite which is basically just one big one, isn't usually packed. The lake has a fairly consistent depth at most points of around 16 feet, and we found this little hole in the east end of the lake in a little bay that the fish would sit in thats about 20 feet deep. We'd troll over this hole and the fish would come up and nail our leech pattern. Just make sure you dont troll along the sides of the lake because thats where the squawfish are, stay in the middle as much as possible.

I'd say try this, buy a big black leech, a babcocks leech because they make great leeches with great materials in the tail that make them very realistic. Buy a willowleaf spinner, thats NOT hamered, and put it above your leech on your leader line. Now, when your trolling, with full sink fly line, what you can do is gently
jig it towards the front of the boat and then back. Very gently, every 5 seconds. This makes the leech a little more realistic in my opinion, and this method gave us the most success. The fish didn't seem to be interested in any of our other flys but this one, the leech pattern proved to be the most successful. Friends who
went with us said the flatfishes were working, but I trolled with flatfish (of various colors and sizes) for the majority of the time in the begginning there, and had nothing! Hope this helps, Scott.

Another GREAT pattern (I found it to be) for fishing on top is the Bodiless Caddis (taken from an article in one of the MANY fishing magazines). You probably won't be able to buy it, but if you tie your own, or know someone that does, you can make them VERY easily:
#8 or 10 Dry fly hook
Attach your thread and add bring it to within 1/8" of the eye.
Add a nice big clump of deer hair (don't forget to stack it and remove all the crap), and tie it in the classic Caddis style; all on top, don't let it spin around the hook.
Trim the head at an angle. Downwards towards the front of the hook. Ta-Da! It took all of three minutes!
The beauty of this fly is that it presents the silhouette of a caddis/mayfly/sedge without all the bulk of dubbing/spinning/yarn. So when it gets wet and starts to sink (as they ALWAYS do), a few false casts gets ALL the water out and you're back in business! For a twist, I might add ONE THIN LAYER of coloured floss or tinsle as underbody.
This baby will float for hours but is easily damaged...one good fight and she's toast! But since they are SOOOO easy to make, you can make up a dozen or so in no time at all!

Back to Fly Fishing Page