Fishing Lakes when it's HOT Outside!

Spending the day cruising around a cold lake is one of the best ways to beat the heat during the summer. I love fishing rivers, but we ha...

Spending the day cruising around a cold lake is one of the best ways to beat the heat during the summer. I love fishing rivers, but we have rattlesnakes, treacherous wading, ticks, poison oak/ivy/sumac, and lots of other pokey-stabby plants around that will put a cramp in your style if you make the wrong move. Lakes are easy, calm, relaxing and beautiful, and most of them in our area are chocked full of hungry trout (and sometimes bass...) The thing that draws many of us to lakes is that anglers can set up their friends and family with some floatie toys, leave them all with a cooler at a picnic table and then get out on the water. Everyone wins...

It took us 4 hours to determine that there were no fish here.

Springtime is arguably the best time to catch trout in lakes. They are hungry, easy to find, and they can be downright easy to catch if you keep up with the changing conditions. Summertime trout can be a little more difficult to catch once the weather gets hot, hot, hot... Trout like to go deep, they don't easily show themselves and it is not always apparent what or where they are eating. There are just a few things to consider when dealing with a lake in the summer that will help you find the nice fish you are looking for.

For this article, we are focusing more on larger lakes that one would likely need a float tube or small boat to fish. High mountain lakes have their own challenges, but are much easier to figure out. Our local "bigger" lakes include Lost, Timothy, Clear, Merrill and Rock among others. They fish very well in the spring, but rarely see much attention from serious anglers in the middle of the summer. They have good food sources, high elevation and enough water to maintain cold temperatures throughout the summer.

Early and Late:
If you beat the sunrise, you will probably get into some great fishing. Callibaetis and chironomids typically pop in the mornings, until the dog days of summer when water temperatures can get too hot. Most of the the lakes in our area will get callibaetis and chironomid hatches all summer, but on drought/heat wave years, these bugs can get a little sparse in late July and August. Caddis however, do not mind the warmer temperatures and will hatch in lakes all summer, especially late in the day. Smaller and shallower lakes warm up quicker, and elevation plays a bigger factor in water temperature in small lakes.

If you arise earlier than I, you can throw a callibaetis dry in little bays and near the edges of dropoffs to deeper water and do well. The Gulper Special is a fly meant just for that purpose and it works very well, but there are a ton of good patterns that will produce nice fish with consistency.

Backpacking and fishing go hand in hand

The problem is that most of us don't get up that early in the summer. When I was camping over the first of July, I woke up to use the restroom at about 4:00 a.m.. I could see that it was just about light enough to fish and there were even a few guys getting ready to get out on the water. Good for those guys. I slept until about 7:00, had some coffee, waited for it to warm up and then I went fishing. By then, the day had warmed, the rising fish and hatching insects had waned, but that's ok, I was still confident that fishing would be great. I had to use a sinking line, but fishing was great.

Trout tend to rise again once the sun falls below the horizon. What they are eating is entirely dependent on when and where you are. Callibaeitis, chironomids/midges, flying ants and caddis are a few likely meals to look for, but its not always the case. There is a lake around here that is fed by a very cold creek. There is a nice PMD and PED hatch in the creek, and the insects tend to float downstream and end up in the top bay of the lake where little cutthroat eat them up quickly.

Damselflies and Dragonflies are very important food sources for our lake living trout. The nymphs are large and swim through open water, becoming rather easy prey for trout, and an important source full of calories. A full sinking line is preferred, and often it is going to be a deep sinking line. Intermediate and type III lines are great in the spring, but we have to get down deeeeep during the hot part of the year. I like a type V full sink line during the heat of the summer on a big lake.

Carey Special is a go-to summer fly

How deep do I need to get? That depends on the lake. Many high mountain lakes will never warm up enough to draw the fish into the middle. The lakes that I like to backpack into do not require any distance to reach the fish. The bigger lakes that aren't at such high elevation are a different story.

The easiest way to find the cold water is to take a dive in. There is usually a distinct line where warm water meets cold. I was about 12 feet down when I found the cold water last weekend, (oh and it was cold!) so I figured that fish would be found in between 12 and 20 feet of water. The lake was a little less than 30 feet deep in the cove where I was fishing according to my anchor rope (a cheap way to figure out the depth). This lake is well over 100 feet deep in the middle and more than a mile across. This makes it harder to find the fish, but it also means that there could be big ones in it...

So where are they?
While we know that trout will usually be deeper during the hottest part of a hot day, they also don't tend to live out in the deepest open water of a big lake. I look for points and coves that create good depth changes. Trolling flies from a tube or boat across these points and coves helps narrow down where. Anywhere that you can pinpoint a depth change is a good place to start. Don't be afraid to go off shore farther than is obvious at first, but there is no need to be trolling a fly in 60' of water... usually.

Dragonfly nymphs produce all summer

So my approach for points is this: First, identify a point, rock outcropping, or any other feature that looks fishy. If there are none, try to find any place where there is a pronounced depth change. Start by trolling across the point, going further than is apparent. The first pass is typically as close to shore as I would reasonably expect fish to be. The next pass is a little bit further off shore and repeated until I am making passes further from shore than I think would be productive.

With bays, I don't go across, I go in and out, trolling on and off the shelf that separates the shallower water in the bay than the deeper water in the open part of the lake. You want to make a grid around likely fishy spots, kinda like a waffle fry, except that you should make S-turns in your tube; don't go in a straight line. Vary the speed and depth of your fly. Control the depth of the fly with a full sink line by feeding more line off the reel or by reeling some in. Using weighted flies will help it get down quicker if needed, and always give it a minute or two to sink before giving it any action.

There's nothing like a summertime sunset on a lonely lake.

I rarely strip flies in during the summer when fishing deep. I let it get down and then give it a twitch or two, maybe a few strips, but then I let that line slide back out as I move around. This keeps the flies deep.

As the day starts to cool off and the sun goes down, fish often begin to moving into shallower water again. Maybe not all the way back into the really shallow flats where they can be in the spring, but closer to the edges of the shelves where they fall into the main part of the lake with occasional jaunts into the shallow water. Given all of that, there are a few times when the fish will be found shallow and close to shore in the summer.

Lakes with a "hex" hatch are pure gold!

One of those times is evenings during the Hexagenia Mayfly hatch. Not all lakes in Oregon/Washington have these big yellow mayflies, but the hatch can be quite productive where they exist. Now, I am aware that Hex flies can jam up radar and be so thick that they slick up the road and cause car accidents in the midwest, but out near the west coast, this hatch is quite subdued comparatively. These big bugs hatch at night, and the last hour of fishable light can be quite epic if you are throwing big nymphs in shallow, muddy areas. In Washington, angling in a lake is permitted at night (not in OR), so fishing a glow-in-the-dark hex pattern at night is about as fun as it gets. These bugs typically hatch in early to mid-July and the hatch can go into August on some lakes.

There are a couple of other scenarios that can bring big ones in shallow, and I really like this next one: Crawdads, Crayfish, whatever you call them... they also move in shallow, muddy areas and get very active in the evening. I like this because big trout love big craws. Pull around a big craw pattern on a floating line right before dark over a muddy, shallow area and things can get really interesting.

Wolf prints next to a high mountain lake

A late afternoon or early evening callibaetis spinner fall is also quite common in our mountain lakes here and the fish will move in for that, even getting into what could be considered really shallow. A dark colored spinner pattern works very well for these sessions. This can be very productive, and can actually happen during the middle of the day sometimes. My first experience with a good spinner fall was on Chopaka Lake in late June, many years ago. It seems like every fish in the lake was in one pod eating these spinners at 3:00 p.m. on a 90+ degree day in a foot of water. It was amazing and not easily forgotten. These spinner falls are pretty consistent during the early part of the summer and make for fun dry fly fishing.

A fourth and important episode in the summer is the flying ant hatch. These nasty ants can cause quite a ruckus. I have been camping when they got so thick that it was maddening. Covering everything in camp including the food (how did 3000 of them get into a locked cooler?) clothes, sleeping bags, electronics, and everything else, but fish love to eat them... and they often land in shallow water around the edges of the lake. These bugs tend to come out during the first nice long heat wave of the season and trout love to come up and eat them whenever they are around.

As the dog days of summer drag on and the water gets warmer and warmer, trout find themselves moving into shallow water less and less. The good news is that they don't disappear. Trout will still spend their days feeding near depth changes, even in mid-August.

Fishing is not always easy on a lake in the summer, but with a few tips and tricks, you can be prepared for just about anything that arises. Now get out and enjoy a nice hot day on the lake.