The next two days I concentrated on finding fish rising in patterns, identifying the taking points, and working them with the same dry fly technique, and outfished everyone using conventional blind casting, subsurface methods. I also like to think I had more fun, casting a dry fly expectantly to rising fish, and landing 18 to 20 inch fish on 7X leader. That is not to say that the pattern of cruising fish was evident every hour of the day. During a heavy midge or mayfly hatch there were so many rises that cruise and
taking patterns were not discernible, and other times when the whole lake seemed dead. But for much of the day when there a few flies hatching here and there, in protected back coves and windward reed edges, if I looked hard enough and long enough, I would spot the soft repetitive rises of cruising, patterned, territorial fish. Much of the day, in fact, that others quit fishing because they had no idea where the fish were or what they would take.
Since one is fishing to rising trout, a floating line and a dry or surface pattern matching what is available naturally is not only the logical choice but necessary to float at the taking point for the minutes required until the fish completes the circuit and returns. Sinking patterns would not work unless they were suspended, as below a corkie. Because the territorial cruising seems to break down during heavy hatch conditions, and resumes as the hatch tapers off, the fish may actually be less selective than
initially assumed. Since everything is visual, you know within minutes when your fly is being refused. Just be sure the refusal is not because the fly is not in the right place. The only drawback to the technique is the wait, sometimes eight or ten minutes. It is almost heresy to cast a fly and then do nothing, no retrieve, no swing, just sit and wait. But in this situation, it works. I have been caught lighting a cigar, or stuffing a sandwich into my face, but always alert enough to grab and lift the
rod gently. Considering the size of these fish, the suspense of spotting and patterning a really big fish and taking it right where one calculates it WILL BE far outweighs whatever pleasure (?) one might find in blind casting.
The technique does demand and reward constant alertness to every clue of surface activity. You need to see the rises to discern the patterns. Blind casting lends itself to concentration elsewhere,
and is almost the only other alternative, so one tends to search blindly with a subsurface pattern and actively with one's eyes until cruising fish are spotted. Then one makes the necessary changes in leader and fly to work that particular fish, or pod of fish.
That lake dwelling trout at times settle into cruising patterns is generally accepted, but many do not realize just how specific and precise this cruise pattern, and more importantly, taking points may become, often repeated hour after hour and day after day by the same fish, the still water equivalent of a
