Ep 78: More Stillwater Tips and Tricks, with Brian Chan
Brian Chan is the owner/operator of Riseform Flyfishing Ventures and guides stillwater fly fishing trips. Before guiding, Brian was a Provincial Fisheries Biologist for 35 years. He also writes a regular column in Fly Fusion Magazine and co-hosts the Sport Fishing on the Fly TV show. In this episode, we start by going over trout biology in lakes, including their feeding patterns, seasonal movements, and more. Then, we transition into fishing tips and techniques that are informed by these biological patterns.
Instagram: @brianchanflyfishing
Website: riseformflyfishing.com
Stillwater Store: stillwaterflyfishingstore.com
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed podcast, your home for fly fish in the backcountry. This is episode 78 with Brian Chan on more stillwater tips and tricks. Hey everybody, just wanted to hop in quickly and make a quick announcement before the show. We are rapidly approaching flyathlon season and for those who aren't familiar with the flyathlon, it is a super fun race that happens a couple times each year and it's based around running, fishing, and drinking beer, which are three of my favorite things. And if you'd like to hear more about the race, you can listen to episode one of the Fish Untamed podcast, where I interviewed Andrew Todd, the founder of Flyathon. But in addition to being a really fun weekend with a lot of fun people, the Flyathon is also a fundraiser to raise money for native cutthroat trout conservation. So if you have a couple extra dollars that you would be interested in donating to a great cause to support native cutthroat trout, go ahead and head over to my website, fishuntamed.com, and you'll find a menu at the top called Flyathlon Fundraiser. That link should take you to the fundraiser and you can donate there. And any amount is greatly appreciated. This would be a great way to support the show and also support a wonderful cause for native trout. That's all I've got for you and we can get on with the show. I just like to start off by getting a background about my guests. So I'd just love to hear how you got your start in fly fishing.
Brian
So I got started with fishing at a very young age because my dad was an avid saltwater salmon fisherman. So I was definitely hooked on fishing at a very young age. And what piqued my interest in fishing in fresh water was reading articles in Outdoor Life magazine that my dad and my dad subscribed to at the time. Of course, he wasn't interested in fishing in rivers or lakes. It was all saltwater. But it piqued my interest to see that and then to read about it and then to watch some TV shows on it. And yeah, that's kind of how I got started. I eventually-- I remember I was probably 10 years old when saw an advertisement for free fly casting lessons being offered by this fly-fishing club in Vancouver where I was born and raised and so I took the bus down on a Saturday morning and and got some instruction on this little lake in this in written downtown Vancouver and I was fascinated from from then on and I I was always fascinated with fish, and I knew when I grew up I wanted to work with fish. And I can remember in grade four, we had to write a little three, four sentence paragraph of what you wanted to be when you grew up. And in grade four, I wrote that I wanted to be an ichthyologist. And that's someone who studies fish. And my mom still has that little paragraph that I printed out on Coolscal. And yeah, that's how I, in my love of, well not my love, my passion of fishing, and particularly fly fishing, led me to a 35-year career managing recreational freshwater fisheries.
Katie
And I would definitely like to get into that. I talked to Phil yesterday, and our talk was mostly focused on tips and techniques for still water, which I would like to cover with you as well, but he mentioned that you had more of like a biological side to it. So I'd also really like to dive into that at some point and kind of just get an overview of how lakes work biologically because...
Brian
Oh, yeah, we can do that.
Katie
But how did you find a passion for still water fishing?
Brian
You know, our neighbors, they had a son that was my age, and we used to go fishing together, take the bus and fish off the wharves in Vancouver Inlet and catch pile perch and things like that. And they invited me on a one-week trip to an interior lake, because they rented a cabin every year, and they asked me if I wanted to go. I obviously wasn't fly fishing then, but I just, you know, it was just so nice to not have to get up at four in the morning to go saltwater fishing and not getting seasick and, you know, and we were able to catch fish and it was warm out and it was beautiful. It was just a wonderful experience and I just loved that experience and that's what really got me hooked on more and more of a focus on freshwater fishing.
Katie
And in particular lakes, like you and Phil are kind of known as the stillwater guys, so did you do much river fishing? Was it just that there were lakes more available? No,
Brian
I fish rivers as much as I can. Where I live in British Columbia in the interior, inundated with lakes and we've got a few large rivers but we don't have small streams and we don't have spring creeks or anything like that but I I've done my share of small stream fishing, river fishing and I really really enjoy it. But you know everybody knows me as a still water guy.
Katie
So a product of your environment at that point if that's what you've got available then.
Brian
Exactly.
Katie
So like I said I would love to dive into the biological side so maybe we could start there. Since that kind of informs you know why techniques might work. So I think it would give listeners a really well rounded idea of why certain techniques would work especially if anyone has listened to the episode I did with Phil. What's a if you could just start with kind of a 30,000 foot overview and maybe we'll dive into a couple more specific things later. But if you were to describe to somebody in general how a lake works, what kinds of communities are going on in the lake, how do fish interact with their prey and their environment? If you could just give an overview and maybe when we keep going we can dive in further on some of these topics.
Brian
Sure. So I can describe a typical productive trout lake, which we've got scattered throughout North America. So I think what's important to understand is that if you took a cross-sectional view of a lake, if you had a lake and then you could cut it in half and then see how it was built, you would notice that the best trout lakes, or the best fishing lakes, have an abundance of shallow water. And then that shallow water slopes off into a deeper mid-lake portion and then shallows back up. So that shallow water is extremely important for photosynthesis to occur, which allows green plants to grow. And that lush green plant vegetation in a lake provides the habitat for the food sources as well as the trout. And the deep parts of the lake, and deep meaning it could only be 30, 40, 50 feet deep, but it's a refuge in the warm summer months for the fish to escape warmer, less oxygenated water. And of having lots of shallow, what we call shoal area, and also having some deep water refuge to escape in the summertime.
Katie
And what... I mean, I know at least a few of the examples, but why are green plants so important?
Brian
So, green plants... So, we're talking about things like pondweed, native species of milfoil, lily pads, they provide habitat for food sources like mayflies, damselflies, dragonflies, caddisflies, and then the shallow muddy areas of the lake provide the habitat for the midges or chironomids. And then if you have lots of emergent vegetation like long stem bulrush or cattails, then you provide the perfect habitat for damselflies, which need some emergent vegetation to crawl up out of the water on to complete the transformation from the nymphal to the adult stage.
Katie
And are these the primary, I know you're not an entomologist specifically, but are these kind of the primary insects you're finding in a lake? And what's kind of that life cycle like? What are fish primarily feeding on, and specifically trout? If we're talking about a typical trout lake, and for the sake of this, we'll talk about the lakes around you, which are probably more productive than the lakes that we have here. What's that food cycle like?
Brian
You probably got the same different or same types of food sources like mayflies and damselflies and caddisflies, dragonflies and midges. just that in a productive lake, the diversity of species and the abundance or population abundance of individual species is higher in a more nutrient-rich lake. But midges or chironomids that live in a lake around where I live in the southern interior of British Columbia hatch the same way they would in a farm pond in Missouri, for example. The sizes and colors, meaning the species will be different, and the relative abundance may be different, but a chironomid or midge hatch the same way there as here, the same as mayflies, the same as damselflies and dragonflies and caddisflies. They'll all hatch. Their life cycle will be similar, their emergence tactics will be the same, regardless of where it is in the world.
Katie
And regarding the prolific hatches that you get on streams, I don't associate at least lakes with as prolific of hatches as some of the streams out there. Is there a reason for that?
Brian
So it all depends on the individual lake. I would compare our lakes where I live as productive in terms of hatches as any tailwater or spring creek found anywhere in North America. it all depends on the water quality, the chemistry of the water, the nutrient richness of that water dictates the biodiversity and abundance of invertebrate food sources for the trout.
Katie
Okay, so if people like myself tend to associate lakes with being less productive in terms of hatches. That's just kind of a localized lake thing, not a lakes in general.
Brian
Yeah, that's just, I mean, we could be on a lake tomorrow in the Kamloops area and the sky is going to be covered with chironomid or midget adults and the water will be covered with the shucks of recently hatched midgets. And the fish are going to be in the water column gorging on those midget people all day long. So it'd be identical to what you would see drifting the Missouri River or the Green River when those midget hatches come off. It's the same except we're in standing water and not flowing water.
Katie
OK, this might be just a localized difference for me, since I'm typically up at some high alpine lakes where they're just not as productive.
Brian
Exactly. So you're-- yeah, that's right. I read that you like to hike and fish remote alpine lakes, which have a much shorter growing season, have extremely limited nutrient loading because it's all rock around there. You're above tree line. So the productivity of that water is a thousand fold less than something in the valley bottom. And so that means that the diversity and abundance of food sources are going to be reflected by the water quality.
Katie
Okay. That's good to know. And maybe you can answer this question for me. Maybe you can't. It might be specific to alpine lakes. But I noticed when I go to them that one of three things happens. There's either a lot of small fish, a couple really big fat fish, or just a couple big but skinny fish. And the skinny fish make sense to me, if they're just not getting enough food. But occasionally, these lakes have just really big fat fish in them. And I'm not sure what the difference is between all these situations.
Brian
So if these are all high elevation alpine lakes, then the lake with just a few big fish has a very limited amount of natural spawning habitat. So recruitment to the lake is extremely low, and there's probably some predation going on by the bigger fish in the lake are eating the fry that come into the lake. Whereas the lake M, the population is low enough of fish in the lake that the available food allows them to grow big. So another lake close by could have a small population but the fish are all skinny but they're big and it's the same situation except the water quality or the water chemistry is different and there's not as much nutrient in that lake to grow as much food for what fish are in there.
Katie
Interesting. And I assume the lake that has a million tiny fish just might have more spawning habitat. There's a lot of fry that are born every year and the growth rate can't really keep up with the number of fish being produced.
Brian
It's got a more gentle gradient inlet stream, better sized gravel for spawning, and so they can overpopulate.
Katie
Huh, that's really interesting. And I'm thinking of lakes I've been to, and one in particular that has the really big fat fish, there's not a lot of shallows at all. It's just kind of a deep bowl, like the sides drop immediately. And so I'm wondering if maybe that's why, you know, there's not a lot of places for them to go into an inlet or an outlet and spawn.
Brian
Yeah, yeah, and these are are these rainbow or cutthroat?
Katie
I'm mostly thinking of cutthroat. Although when it's a lot of small fish, it's often brook trout.
Brian
Okay. Yeah interesting
Katie
why do you ask I'm curious if there's differences in species?
Brian
Yeah. Yeah, there's there's so so cutthroat in general are much are far less selective feeders than rainbow trout, for instance. And brook trout can be extremely selective in their feeding compared to rainbow trout. So the cutthroat that are big get big because they don't snub any food sources. They'll eat anything that gets in front of them. Okay. Whereas brook trout can be extremely moody and picky on their diet.
Katie
Okay, this is just me spitballing here, but is the reasoning for cutthroats being really selective that they... Well, I guess maybe not, because I'm thinking of the cutthroats today, which are often stocked in these high alpine lakes, but that's not necessarily where they originated. Most of those lakes were barren. But in my mind, I was thinking, if a cutthroat is in one of these lakes where there isn't a lot of productivity, then they might not be able to be selective because they've got to take what they can get. But now that I'm thinking about it, if they weren't originally in these lakes when we put them there, then do you happen to know why cutthroat are kind of opportunistic whereas something like a brook trout is more selective?
Brian
No, it's just that's just the nature of the individual species. So there's been many, many studies done on the cutthroat in the Yellowstone River and in the section that's catching these fishing below Yellowstone Lake. And the average cutthroat in that two to three miles below the lake, which is heavily fished, it's right in the middle of Yellowstone National Park, get caught an average of nine times a season. They're very gullible.
Katie
Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking across species I've caught. And what's interesting is that when I think of a fish that is generally easy to catch, the first thing that comes to mind for me is brook trout. I feel like if there are brook trout somewhere, I can almost throw anything and I will catch one. And then on the other end of the spectrum are brown trout, where you've got to, especially as they get larger, they get, I feel like much harder to trick. But yeah, I definitely think of brook trout as being the easy ones.
Brian
And that's certainly not the way it is in our lakes. The only time the brook trout seem to be easier to catch is in the winter through the ice. But as you know, for brown trout, the older they get, the more nocturnal they get in their feeding patterns. Brown trout don't get big and old by being stupid.
Katie
Now, what species do you have around you? What are you usually fishing for in your lakes?
Brian
We're fishing for rainbow and brook trout. Most of our lakes were created by receding glaciers. So they were scoured out, so they were fishless. So stocking programs sustain our fisheries. We have a very progressive fish culture program in BC where 95% of the rainbow trout that we stock into our lakes are the parents of those fish were wild. They weren't hatchery brood stock. So that maintains the genetic diversity of the fish and it maintains their strong fighting abilities that way. And then we also, to manage our quality fisheries, We stock non-reproductive fish, so they're sterile or triploided, so they don't reproduce, so that all their energy goes into growth, not into sexual maturation at three and four and five years of age, so they can get quite large.
Katie
That's something I'd like to hear more about, just because I wrote a blog post a year or two ago about triploid trout, and I'm by no means an expert, but it was more just a primer for what is a triploid trout. And it just goes into the fact that they're sterile, and they're used to grow big. But I had a couple of people reach out and express I don't know if concern is the right word, but questions about whether triploid trout are a good thing or if they can ever go wrong. And I'm not really sure what all of the concern has been about. But are triploids 100% sterile? Is there any chance that bad genetics slip through that can then breed into a wild population? Or just tell me more about triploid trout in general.
Brian
Sure. You know, it's not 100%. You can have, it could be 98.5, it could be 99.5%. But for instance, in British Columbia, we learned that if we stocked brook trout, diploid or reproductive brook trout in lakes that had outlet streams, and those fish escaped and got into river systems that were home to native bull trout populations, the brook trout could interbreed with the bull trout and the progeny would be, or the offspring would be sterile, naturally. And so brook trout were a threat to endangered or red-listed species of bull trout. As you probably know, the bull trout are a threatened species in a lot of their habitats. So since 1996 in British Columbia, all brook trout stockings have been non-reproductive, and they are not stocked in lakes that have outlets. So that was something, that's a long time ago, I mean you think about, that was very proactive back then. But the stocking of non-reproductive rainbows, and we also stock non-reproductive kokanee, where we don't want them to reproduce, we want to manage, control the population. It's all about controlling or managing growth rates. And the decision has to be made on a a particular lake, if it's going to be a family fishery that's open year-round, ice fishing, open water, high catch limits, then you want to manage, you want to put enough fish in that lake for them to be able to be caught. But if you're managing a lake for a quality fishing experience, then you put far less fish in the lake. You put non-reproductive stock in, you don't have winter fishing, it's probably going to be catch and release when it is open or a significantly reduced limit like one fish, and it'll be a single barbless bait ban on the lake. And that's just to increase survival rates of fish that are going to be caught and released. And it works.
Katie
Now, if you are stocking the non-reproductive brook trout, does that mean that you have to basically continue to stock them? Like you're kind of guaranteeing that the stocking will have to continue because they can't reproduce naturally?
Brian
Yeah.
Katie
Okay.
Brian
Yeah, yeah. It's an ongoing, it's basically an annual commitment to be stocking them. So many of our lakes in British Columbia, like we've got world-class stillwater trout opportunities in the interior reaches of BC. I often refer to it as the Yellowstone North. What we have in lakes is comparable to any Blue Ribbon, tailwater, Spring Creeks, anywhere else in North America. And it shows by where the anglers come from, the fish lakes in BC. They know. I mean, we get lots of, for instance, lots and lots of anglers from Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, coming to BC to fish lakes because the quality of the fishing is so much better. The quality of the fish is so much better.
Katie
Now, is it true that the non-reproductive fish grow larger because they're not putting their, I guess, their growth energy toward reproduction and instead putting it toward getting bigger? Or, because I've heard that triploids tend to be bigger, but I don't know if that's because they're often stocked in conjunction with, you know, maybe a catch and release laws that are just allowing them to grow larger.
Brian
Yeah, so the non-reproductive trout, you know, direct all their energy to growth. Plus, non-reproductive fish live longer. They'll live seven, eight, nine years before dying of old age. Whereas reproductive trout rarely get past five or six years of age simply because the rigors of spawning take their toll.
Katie
Another question about BC that I thought of when you were talking about the world-class lakes. You mentioned that there were not a lot of small streams there, but you guys have mountains, right? And that's where I tend to think of small streams. So why don't you have the great small stream fishing that we have here because of our mountains?
Brian
So, I guess the best small stream fisheries in BC are on the east side of the Rocky Mountains and in the southeast corner of the province and it's for West Slope Cutthroat, which are native. And then we do have small stream rainbow fisheries in the northern, central and northern parts of the province. And again, all of our river systems are wild. We don't stock cutthroat or rainbow into rivers. The only river stockings that are done are coastal steelhead in a handful of rivers. So our stream fisheries and our river fisheries are all based on wild populations of either rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, or bull trout, which are char.
Katie
Do you guys have native rainbows there?
Brian
Yes, oh yes, yes we do.
Katie
And is that, how far inland? Is it just basically as far as we'll connect to the coast that can hold native rainbows on the west coast?
Brian
I know that there's native rainbows that are part of a coast mountain range to have access to the ocean, but we have inland populations of rainbow, wild rainbow that are never going to spend their whole life in rivers in the interior regions of the province. So British Columbia is a huge, huge province. It's extremely big. So there's lots of diversity of geography and the native or wild fish populations match the geography that they live in.
Katie
Every time I look at a map of Canada, I'm surprised by how big your provinces are compared to our states.
Brian
Yeah. Yeah.
Katie
One last question on maybe more of the biology side before we get into some actual fishing techniques. What are the changes seasonality-wise? What are fish doing in the spring, through summer, and into winter? What's that transition look like? Where are they're hanging out, and why they're moving where they're moving?
Brian
So right now, it's mid-spring. It's the mid-spring season for us in the lakes in the interior regions of the province. So this is the time to be fishing because this is, it's from early spring till early summer when 90% of the aquatic insect hatches occur. And so right now we're just getting into the heavy midge or chironomid hatches, which are an extremely important still water food source for trout. And also one of the most effective ways to catch fish on a fly is with chironomid or midge pupa patterns. And then by mid-summer, because water temperatures are warming up, the majority of the hatches have thinned out. So we have to remember that everything in lakes is governed by water temperature. And so those warming temperatures in the spring as they build towards early summer sees the bulk of aquatic insect hatches. Midsummer to early fall, the fish are then feeding on food sources that are in the lake because they're immature, down to flies, mayflies, dragonflies, or they're feeding on freshwater shrimp or scots because they're year-round, or leeches and they're typically feeding in deeper water because oftentimes the shallow shoal water on the lake is too warm during the middle of summer and the trout can't get back on to the shallow shoals which provides the best food sources until the late fall months when air temperatures have cooled, water in preparation for winter and four to six months of ice.
Katie
And in the winter, I suppose that would probably be ice fishing if anyone were out there, but where are they hanging out in the winter? Are they moving back into the deep water where it's temperatures more consistent?
Brian
In the winter time, at the start of winter, just as the lake freezes over in the early winter, the fish are still in shallow water. and then they'll slowly slip out into deeper water during the middle of winter, and then they'll come back into shallow water late winter, right until ice off.
Katie
Okay. Now, tying this into fishing techniques, I have to imagine that you are catering what you're throwing and how you're throwing it for these seasonal changes. I have to assume that you're fishing differently in the spring than you might be in the middle of summer.
Brian
Yes.
Katie
Walk me through that. You know, if you go out, let's say next week, what would you be throwing and why would you be doing that? And then maybe let's say like late summer, just before fall starts, before the weather starts getting cool, maybe compare it to what you might be doing on an average day in that time of the year.
Brian
Okay, so if we were out on the lake tomorrow or the next week or for the next month, we would be fishing most likely with floating lines, floating fly lines, with or without strike indicators and we would be suspending midge pupa, chironomid pupa, we would be wind drifting leeches, micro leeches, or we would be casting and retrieving mayfly nymphs, damselfly nymphs, caddis pupa. But during the months of May and most of June, it's predominantly midge or chironomid pupil fishing. But if we move the clock ahead until August the 15th, the height of summer, we're going to go out on the water, we would be rigging up type 5, type 6, type 7 full sinking lines and fishing deeper water, the edges of the drop off before they come up to the shoals or mid-lake, 30 feet of water, 40 feet of water, and we would be fishing leeches, dragonfly nymphs, or we'd be suspending blobs, which imitate clusters of zooplankton, or we would be fishing, we would be casting and retrieving attractor-type patterns like boobies, which are very effective in the warm summer months in deep water. So we're trying to elicit an aggressive strike from a fish that sees something coming through their territory and they bite at it to get rid of it, not necessarily to eat it. And then by the third week of September, the fish are now back in shallow water and it's going to be a floating line situation again with leeches, shrimp or scud patterns, or slow sinking lines with scud patterns, water boatmen back swimmer patterns.
Katie
Now the fish are in shallow water in both spring and fall but I noticed that in the spring you're using chironomids and in the fall you're using scuds, leeches, things like that. Is that just due to the hatch schedule more than the fish behavior at that point?
Brian
It's because in the spring the predominant hatch and food source chironomids, they're all done by fall. Their patches are finished. In the fall, it's bread and butter, food sources, scuds, leeches, and then fall mating and swarming flights of water boatmen and backswimmers. And then also things like juvenile damselfly nymphs, because they have a multi-year life cycle, so there's always baby damsels around. You'll search them out.
Katie
And do you ever throw these other patterns under an indicator? Or are you mostly stripping those in without an indicator under the assumption that they move around a little bit more than midges do? Do you vary that at all?
Brian
So you know, pretty much the scuds, which are an extremely important food source for trout in nutrient-rich lakes, they're often better fished casting or treating with sinking lines, like clear camo or slow sinking type 2, type 3, full sinking lines, and the fish will chase after them. But we do a lot, if you think about it, because so much of our feeding is done in shallow water, like the prime time, spring and the fall, it's done in shallow water, the food sources are typically close to the bottom, we can fish a lot of the year with floating lines and indicators. It's an extremely effective way to fish.
Katie
And when you're choosing a depth for your indicator rig, Phil and I got into this a little bit and we talked about how he's usually fishing these flies pretty close to the bottom. But how are you dialing in that depth? Is it kind of a trial and error? Like start with roughly the depth of the lake and then adjust it as needed? Or how are you choosing that?
Brian
You go to bed every night with your depth sounder under your pillow. Your depth sounder is your friend. Otherwise you're clipping a weight onto your fly, lowering it down, setting your indicator when you know you're a foot off the bottom. But you really, really at a disadvantage if you're not fishing with some kind of a depth sounder.
Katie
Interesting. That's not something I usually think of being associated with fly fishing. And I'm not really sure why, but maybe it's because a lot of fly anglers, you know, wade streams and so it's just not a piece of gear you would use. But I assume based on that, that you are generally fishing from a boat?
Brian
Yes. We don't, we have very few lakes that you can fish from shore because of the extensive shallow water and you sink up to your neck if you try to wade in it. You need some kind of a floating craft. Unlike, like I've done my share of alpine lake fishing, you can fish from shore because it's rocky.
Katie
Well, that's why I was wondering because, again, it's so hard for me to put myself in this other situation because when I'm fishing a lake that's not an alpine lake, it's generally a very warm water lake, you know, bass, bluegill, things like that. I very rarely fish a trout lake that's not a high alpine lake. And you're right, those alpine lakes, we often have a shelf that's maybe four feet of water, but it's all rocky. So you throw a pair of chest waders on, and you can wade out to your chest and just heave it out there and get right over the shelf. So this is a completely different world.
Brian
Yeah, it's different. You need to be in something that floats.
Katie
And are you usually in a small personal float tube, or are you in a larger boat? I know you said you guided, which I'd also like to hear about.
Brian
Yeah. You know what, the standard floating apparatus up here is a 10 or 12 foot aluminum john boat. Or in my case, I have a 10 foot john boat for myself, if I go out myself, then I have a 14 foot john boat when I'm taking guests out.
Katie
Okay. And so I'd like to hear more about this too, because most of the guides I've talked to again have been river guides. Tell me how a trip goes on a lake. You're taking a client out, let's say they want to catch quite a few fish but they're maybe interested in some larger fish as well. How are you going about finding a good spot in the lake and getting that person on fish?
Brian
So, you know what, I've been guiding for about maybe 15 years now. And every year when I I commit to guiding again, I know that, and your river guides will tell you the same thing, you have to be on the water constantly to know what's going on. Like it would be interesting if it was only one lake I had to fish, but I've got a hundred lakes within an hour and a half drive of Kamloops to fish. And so I've learned very well, you know, 20 or 30 key lakes that I like to fish. And so if one of my clients says, "I'd like to try to catch some fish more than three pounds, maybe get a big five, six, seven pounder," then that narrows down the lakes that I can choose from. And so I'm constantly on the water just getting ready for the next clients that I'll be taking out. I always say, I never go to a lake blind, meaning I never fish a lake with guests that I have not fished within at least two days. You just can't risk it. You gotta know what's going on.
Katie
Well, and Phil and I talked about this too, and I think lakes are often a little overwhelming for people because it kind of just seems like a big open bathtub. Where do you start? rivers as much as it's harder to deal with the currents and things. If you're getting started fly fishing, getting a drag-free drift is a feat in itself. So that's the difficulty. But in rivers and especially smaller rivers and small streams, finding the fish is generally not the hard part. It's getting a good drift and getting them to actually want to take your fly. But in a lake, it's just really hard to figure out where to even begin. I would like to hear your process on how you find it, Phil and I talked about this, but I'm sure everybody's got their own unique method of finding where a fish is going to be.
Brian
That's right. I get more and more I get guests that are lifelong river fishermen, but they're transitioning to lakes because they're getting older and it's harder for them to be hiking up streams and they want to get away from busy traffic on the water. So I get them out on the lake and I go, "Where do you start?" And then said, "Well, the key is understanding the life cycles of the food sources that live in the lake." So you have to know, we have to understand where certain bugs live, how much, the depth zones they prefer. And it's all about that shallow. It's all about the shoal area where you get photosynthesis that creates the habitat. So a simple rule of thumb is we probably spend 75% of our time on lakes fishing in water less than 20 feet deep. Because the maximum extent of photosynthesis, even in the clearest lakes, is about 25 feet. So you've got to go where the grocery store is, because that's where the fish are going to go shopping. And then you have to be able to recognize the different hatches that are coming off, or Noel have a general idea of the timing of them. So there's a lot, I mean, in rivers, in flowing waters, you have to understand, you understand the trout habitat, pool, riffle, run, glide, and that's where they live. In lakes, it's the shallow shoal area, it's the edge of the drop off to deep water, and then it's the deep water zone, but it's all seasonally timing specific.
Katie
And I think that in itself is even difficult, just if I'm thinking about seasonality, sure, it's easy to say that, you know, in the spring they're here and in the summer they're here, but then there's that gray area in between, you know, when are they moving? And I'm sure that's a little bit different every year just based on weather. Is that a bit of a trial and error the way you said that you don't want to guide somewhere that you haven't fished in the past two days? Like you just want to go out there and, you know, let's say it is one of those transition times. You're just going to go out there and try to prospect for fish until you find out where they are and kind of get a mental note?
Brian
Yeah, you know, I may get on a lake and we may not fish for half an hour because I'll just be motoring around looking at different areas of the lake, watching for fish moving. If I see two or three fish move in one area, we're over there. And there may not be anything hatching, so we're going to go through bread and butter food sources like leeches, dragonfly nymphs, things like that to try to get a fish. To get a fish that's big enough so I can do a throat pump on it and find out what they're really feeding on. And then hopefully by 10.30 in the morning, 11 o'clock in the morning, the spring chironomid hatches will start and we'll see some shucks floating by the boat or the swallows will come out and we know they're not flying for exercise, they're looking for the same hatch we're looking for as well as what the trout are looking for.
Katie
Interesting. And Phil also mentioned the throat pumping, which I'm aware of. Is that more of a lake thing than a river thing? Because I don't actually know anyone, or at least I'm not aware if I know anyone who actually does that on the river. But my thought is maybe that it's pretty easy to see fish in the river, at least smaller ones, and you can kind of see what they're feeding on, especially if they're rising. Whereas in a lake, I could see it, you know, you have no idea.
Brian
You have no idea. No. So, you know, the proper use of a throat pump, which, you know, are commercially sold as stomach pumps, you're not pumping the stomach, you're pumping the esophagus and the top end of the gullet, because you want live food sample. You want to see the chironomid pupa wiggling around in your little sample jar, or the mayfly nymphs, or damselfly nymphs or the zooplankton or the shrimp or the scuds.
Katie
What's the weirdest thing you've ever pulled out of a trout?
Brian
You know, out of a throw pump, you know, I've seen wasps and honeybees, but when I was working as a biologist, I did a lot of lake inventory, you know, sampling fish populations and we would be doing a stomach analysis and I found a beer bottle cap and a pull tab in a trout one time. I don't know how he got that bottle cap down. I just couldn't believe it.
Katie
This was the same trout with both a pull tab and a bottle cap?
Brian
Yeah, he had a beer bottle cap and a pull tab from another trout.
Katie
That trout is looking to have a good time. And the last thing I wanted to touch on is dry fly fishing because mostly we've been talking about chironomids and some of the other subsurface flies like scuds and leeches. Do you have a pretty significant dry fly season and if so how does that factor into what you're throwing when you go out?
Brian
Yeah, so our dry fly fishing in the lakes is restricted to mayflies, Calabasas mayflies, and a couple of species of caddis flies. And so the mayflies, like a nice cloudy day like it is tomorrow, I could take you to a lake and we would get some adult mayfly fishing in the mid to late afternoon. So the mayflies are hatching in shallow, shallow water, you know, five, six, seven feet of water this time of year, middle of May to the middle of June. And then late June through July we have caddis hatches, caddis fly hatches on not every lake, very specific lakes, and you can have some very good dry fly fishing when the caddis are initially emerging, So the pupa has got to the surface, the adult's crawled out, it's holding its wings tent-like to drive them, holds them down and starts scampering across the water to get airborne. You can have some phenomenal fishing then. Or you can have very good fishing when the female caddis adult comes back to lay eggs, typically in the evening hours. they'll run across the surface of the lake and become extremely vulnerable to foraging trout.
Katie
Now do you skitter your fly on the surface to mimic that or are you generally leaving it sit there?
Brian
No, you're casting it out on a floating line, hits the water, and it's continuous fast one to three inch pulls to make on the caterpillars. You want to make a V wake, you want to make some surface stirreds. Whereas if it was a, if we were fishing mayfly adults, you would let it just wind drift and let the breeze push it in front of the feeding lanes of the trout and they'll eat it.
Katie
Yeah, that makes sense. I have definitely seen caddisflies skitter before, but I feel like mayflies just kind of sit there and wait for their fate. Yeah, that's exactly right. (laughing) Well, Brian, just to wrap up, tell me where people can find you. I know you mentioned in the document I sent you that you host a fishing show.
Brian
Yeah, you know, I'm a regular co-host of "Spark Fishing on the Fly," which it's been going now for 26 years. And I've done a lot of TV shows for different productions over the years, But, Spark Fishing on the Fly, it's all we do is fly fishing. It's a lot of fun. You know, the host, Don Freschi and his brother, Dale Freschi and I, we look back at 25 years ago, and we all had nice jet black hair. Don and Dale had dark, brown-black hair now, and you look at us now, we're all salt and pepper. And we get a chuckle out of it.
Katie
Well, people have gotten to follow along with your journey, I'm sure. And you said you also write for FlyFusion magazine. Do you have a regular article in that?
Brian
Yeah, I have a regular Stillwater column in FlyFusion magazine, which I enjoy writing because I can get very, very focused on really minute topics, but I can expand them. So it's really dedicated to the still water junkies that are out there. And we're certainly seeing more and more still water fly fishers. And unfortunately, one of the reasons it's unfortunate because one of the reasons why in British Columbia, we're seeing more and more still water anglers is because of significantly declining steelhead populations. they're collapsing. It's so sad to see. And as well as in-river salmon, recreational salmon fishing opportunities are drastically declining. And so the saving grace in this province for freshwater fishing are trout lakes, because we have thousands of them.
Katie
Well, at least there's something to maybe take the pressure off. I don't want to get too into the steelhead world in this episode, but I know that there's varying opinions on the best way to handle that. And I know at least some people are in favor of at least taking a couple years of closures and kind of getting people elsewhere. So if people could voluntarily go fish lakes instead and maybe take some of that pressure off, then hopefully the steelhead can rebound a bit in the future.
Brian
Yeah, there's so much going against them that we have no control over, meaning, and I'm talking about ocean survival because of global warming and the way the ocean temperatures are changing and where they migrate and where their food sources are. It's a tough road ahead of them. And incidentally, with the other downfall of declining steelhead populations is that anglers are now focusing more and more on bull trout, which are already are a species of concern or a species at risk or threatened depending on where you are in North America. And so that's that's also causing issues because as you know bull trout are, once you find them, they're very very gullible, they're not hard to catch once you find them and so there's issues with that. So thankfully we have lots of lakes to buffer, to absorb these anglers that are losing their traditional fishing opportunities.
Katie
Yeah, and I'm sure there's people around the continent too who just, you know, they're sick of the pressure they see on rivers and might just want to try something new where they can get out and try some new skills and maybe take the pressure off. So, you know, hopefully we can kind of spread out and not bog any one resource down too much and, you know, spread ourselves out over the landscape a little bit more.
Brian
Exactly, yeah.
Katie
Well, Brian, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I really liked the biology side you could bring to it. I was really excited to find out that you've been a biologist. But I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and hope that you're going to get out on the water soon. I'm sure your season's about to pick up.
Brian
It was great talking to you, Katie. And I'm on the water again tomorrow. I'm looking outside right now and we've had a windy, wet spring and it's raining out there right now. so I'm not really excited yet.
Katie
(laughing) I wish you the best of luck weather-wise too.
Brian
No, thanks very much.
Katie
Thank you. All right guys, thanks for listening. Don't forget to head over to the website, fishuntamed.com for all episodes and show notes. And also please subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. That'll get my episodes delivered straight to your phone. And also if you have not yet, please consider going over to Apple Podcasts and leaving a rating or review. That's very helpful for me and I'd greatly appreciate it. Other than that, thank you guys again for listening and I will be back in two weeks. Bye everybody.
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