Northwest Fishing Reports

Mike Carey made a youtube about catching kokanee with trolling flies. Does anyone have any comments about catching rainbow with trolling flies?

Go to the main site and search reports under my username to see 5 pages of reports almost all of which involve using trolling flies for rainbow.

I have had success with a fly tied directly to the main line or with a swivel and leader. I run it around 100 ft back, sometimes I add a split shot or two. I just get the cheap assortment of flies and use the ones that look good to me. I like black or gray with maybe a little red or white. And I did just kill the crappie one night with a yellow one.

That’s almost all I use when fishing for trout in any lake from Roosevelt to the put and take lakes in Eastern WA. I’m 74 and when in HS I tied flies and sold them to two of the resorts on Waitts lake. We had a cabin there at that time. Grew up trolling flies with lead line and been doing it all my life. Generally I don’t use bait in the fly and in The local lakes I jerk the flys using a pole I built in 1962. Still in use but repaired it a few times.

Trolling flies work great for all trout and salmon species it appears. I've caught rainbows on trolling flies both in Lake Sammamish and the local smaller lakes.

BradF: You mention trolling flies with lead line. What is the advantage of using lead line versus ordinary line plus sinkers? I had heard that lead line is not very suitable for trolling shallow, like close to the surface. Is that correct?

Bilgewater wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 22, 2020 6:27 pm

BradF: You mention trolling flies with lead line. What is the advantage of using lead line versus ordinary line plus sinkers? I had heard that lead line is not very suitable for trolling shallow, like close to the surface. Is that correct?

Don’t think of leaded line as fishing super deep. It’s just a matter of how many colors you are running behind the boat. You can keep it fairly shallow.
Leaded line will be a more natural presentation.
If you are using a mono mainline, and sinkers as you said, and then running line/leader down to fly, you’ve got a variance in the depth of the whole setup. Sinker riding the deepest, then your long leader to fly is riding higher in the water column. Leaded line is just a little cleaner presentation than the whole sinkers/swivels, etc. (I don’t even like leaded line personally, I’m a downrigger guy... but in some cases I will pull out the LL.

The Quadfather wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 28, 2020 3:23 pm

Don’t think of leaded line as fishing super deep. It’s just a matter of how many colors you are running behind the boat. You can keep it fairly shallow.
Leaded line will be a more natural presentation.
If you are using a mono mainline, and sinkers as you said, and then running line/leader down to fly, you’ve got a variance in the depth of the whole setup. Sinker riding the deepest, then your long leader to fly is riding higher in the water column. Leaded line is just a little cleaner presentation than the whole sinkers/swivels, etc. (I don’t even like leaded line personally, I’m a downrigger guy... but in some cases I will pull out the LL.

I agree with Quad. Additionally, with leaded line, I can reel the swivel all the way to rod tip if wanted/needed, cannot do that with drop sinkers.

Depth fished will depend on speed and amount of leaded line out. I don't fish "colors" since I use line counter reels. At Roosevelt, leadcore will outfish almost every other method certain times of the year, and during those times, I like not having to use downriggers.

All will depend where and how you fish.