I'm heading up to East Lake for labor day. I went up there early September and spent the entire day catching browns and rainbow on dry flies off the bank.
What should I expect this time of year and how has the fly fishing been recently?
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"Hook it, Set it, Rip it, Net it"
I spent last week at East Lake with only moderate success. In the pre-dawn hours I had a number of fish on large streamer patterns.
There were stong mid-day hatches of mayflies and caddis. I had a mixed bag of Altantics, Browns and Rainbows fishing the shallow banks off the south end fishing Pheasant Tails and ostrich nymphs.
While rowing around I was reglarly marking fish at 30-40 feet and managed to dredge up a couple of large bows on buggers. (saved by the full sink).
But all in all it was slow for all. 90 degrees will do that. However, the ospreys were having a field day.
Try fishing along the west and north shorelines from 11-3 with a dry line, a callibaetis dry followed by a callibaetis emerger or cripple. Have size 14-18 in your box. A lot of the rises will be right up against the bank in spots where there is a drop off nearby. If you aren't getting a lot interest in your dry, slowly strip your line in to give the emerger a bit of upward movement. And I mean slowly. Think how far a 1/8 of an inch bug would move if it were struggling to get out of it's nymph shuck and cut that in half.
This is definitely not a zipperlip hatch anymore. Look for the fleet of driftboats, prams and pontoons. Folks used to drift through which was a better way to fish this hatch, but people started to anchor up so that seems to be the norm now. It's a lot of fun and can be way more productive than trying to pull the big boys off the bottom during the daylight hours.
East Lake
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