Let me start by saying this was my first trip to eastern Washington and
sorry if the report is long winded.
Dry Falls left me with more questions than answers but did give me just
enough to wish I could go back as soon as possible. Two friends and I
headed out Friday afternoon around 4pm so we could get in early and set
up camp while there was still some light. We rolled in about 8:30pm and
proceeded to get so drunk as to where I needed help getting back to the
tent. Still I managed to get up about 5:30am and kick everyone else out
of bed and we headed down to the lake.
There we quite a few people in the lake on Saturday but really it was
not that bad. Also the wind was almost non-existent. We put on the water
around 7 and were greeted by many risers and huge fish rolling on the
surface. I think I saw one dragonfly buzzing around and a lot of
chronomid shucks on the surface. So I immediately went for the chronomid
patterns. Now I have read a lot about fishing chronomids but never
actually had done it. Needless to say I watched a chronomid god anchored
next to me catch about 7 nice trout in under an hour while I went
fishless. Now I was frustrated as all hell and asked the guy what he was
using and he said a light green chrono. I didn't have any of that color
and didn't feel like going back in to tie any so I decided to tie on a
cream damsel and decided to troll to the other side of the lake and fish
the tullies. About half way there I hooked into a fat 17 inch fish which
made me feel a while lot better. That was by far the largest trout I
have been lucky enough to catch. Then that was it no more fish and we
decided to break for lunch and come back that evening.
Later that evening I tied on a green and black bugger to troll along
while I headed to the back bay. About 5 minutes later I felt a light tug
and fish on. From the way the fight started I thought it was a rather
small fish but after a 10 minute fight I was holding a 20+ inch fish in
my hand. A very nice fish and of course I had to go find my friends and
brag about it.
I hooked up with my friends in the back bay and they were just as
frustrated as I was with al the fish the chrono guys and gals were
catching. So we decided to put on a big dry with a black chrono tied on
as a dropper. We basically just worked the tullies and had some
tremendous takes. So tremendous in fact that we never had one on for
that long cause most of the time they were snapping the tippet. Nothing
to hand and around 9:30 we went back to camp and I resolved to spend the
next morning seriously fishing chronos.
Arrived around 7 and once again there were a lot of fish working , no
wind, and only about 5 others on the lake. I tied on a black chrono
about 4 feet from my indicator and anchored down about 20 feet out from
the tullies in the back bay. After about 15 minutes I was greeted with a
healthy take but lost the fish about a good 5 minute battle. Using the
same method I missed about 3 more fish and we decide to take off cause
my partners had not caught anything on the trip and couldn't take it any
longer.
So all in all it was a good time and very educational. We saw no
evidence of damsels or callibaetis in good number either day. Chronos
are the ticket and if you excel at that type of fishing you could
basically catch fish all day. Black chronos seemed to be working for
folks all day and light green was working particularly well before noon.
With the weather being in the 80s both days we were there I would
imagine the bigger damsels and mayflies will be coming off in large
numbers soon. Of course I wish I would have caught more fish but the
ones I did catch were memorable.
Now a question for you all. Generic chrono pattern, is there such a
thing? I have seen some guys chrono boxes and it looks like they contain
40 or more different patterns. I am looking for a basic pattern I can
tie in an array of colors and sizes and have it work a good percentage
of the time. Is there such a thing?
-sean
