Good WNY tributary fishing continues!

The first of the day.

Our WNY tributaries continue to provide excellent fly fishing for trophy lake run trout.

As of now the salmon are all but gone! They finished their job a week or so after Sandy pushed through. Their dead decaying bodies litter the shallows and the bank, adding nutrients back onto the system for the betterment of future generations.

A nicely colored male with the fly of the day

Even a few of these rainbow/steelhead made an appearance

In fact, Sandy’s after effects provided some way better than average fishing for me. When the water is high and stained, the fish move and become very active, especially before the cold sets in. And I had the fortune of hitting it at the right time. Fishing was out of this world! I spent a little over two hours fishing a local small tributary, hooking up a dozen times and landing seven – all trout!

High water = Great fishing!

My technique for that day was dead drifting egg patterns, but with a little twist! I had no indicator with me on this day, so I had to resort to an alternative style of fishing. My goal was to keep a tight line at all times but also try to get a natural drift. What I came up with was as simple as it gets. In fact it is what I used to do as a kid when fishing with worms on my local trout stream. All I did was put a medium sized split shot a foot above the egg pattern, cast slightly downstream and allow the egg to drift with my rod guiding it down and across. Kind of like a dead drift/swing combo!

With the tight line I could feel the fish pick up the fly more than half the time, and on two occasions, I had the pleasure of the fish pull the fly just as you would have them do when swinging streamers.

This was a great change from the low water stalk that I have had to employ for much of the fall, and better yet, the fish responded well. But like any high water period during the spawn, this is what you should expect. Plenty of eggs getting washed into the system will always put the fish in the mood for eggs.

Sometimes...keeping it simple is best!