Hi Everyone!
Rick, Doug and I hit Birch Lake yesterday out by Caroline. Birch Lake has brookies, rainbows and browns in it! The big challenge at Birch is to get out on the lake. You have to negotiate a hill with your gear and that involves some grunting. Luckily we had Doug's wheels to put under our two prams to get our boats to the water.
Once set up we saw that the water was 63F. Over the course of the day, the surface water temperature got just over 64F.
It took a while to connect with a trout. Rick did it with the full sink line "dangling" with a blob! The fish for the most part were cruising deep and eating daphnia. We concentrated on fly fishing the edges of the deeper areas. Throat samples continued to show the trout were eating daphnia but also boatmen, backswimmers, damsel nymphs (immature) and hyalella shrimp (the tiny ones).
We had the most success using a size 14 balanced flashback ( a regular flashback would have been fine too) and a size 14 balanced BMW (Brian's Marabou Leech) in olive. Our best depth was 5 to 6 feet below a strike indicator in 11 to 13 feet of water on the edge of drop offs. We did cast and retrieve flashbacks as well. We picked up a few fish later in the day doing just that! We did have some success with blobs earlier in the day.
I think we still have to wait until water temperatures come down a bit for the boatmen/backswimmer action to really heat up!
It was a beautiful day and I enjoyed being out on the water with my good friends.
Birch Lake Brookie
Hyalella Shrimp
Boatmen/Backswimmers and daphnia
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