In some high-mountain lakes the food is maddeningly simple. The trout swim slowly and open-mouthed, like certain whales, straining minute, suspended food organisms known as zooplankton from the water. If zooplankton can grow something as large as a whale, why should a trout eat anything else? In many lakes the fish spend all summer and fall ingesting animals far smaller than a size-28 hook. The zooplankton in high-mountain lakes is a predictable collection, including Copepods such as Cyclops and Diaptomus, Rotifers such as Rotatoria, and Cladocera such as Daphnia. Most of these minute animals feed on algae, which means that populations will peak when microscopic plants bloom in midsummer. That is when trout are likely to feed on zooplankton exclusively. The trout follow the zooplankton. Some of these planktonic animals have eyespots and, reacting to sunlight, they migrate daily. They reach maximum abundance near the surface early in the morning, but with growing illumination the animals begin sinking, reaching depths of fifty feet or more, depending on the clarity of the water, and stay deep until late afternoon. Then they begin a slow drift upward to the surface. The need to understand zooplankton has little to do with imitation, and everything to do with tracking the trout. In clear lakes you should be able to spot these fish cruising slowly at a specific depth-hooking them is another question. Joel Hart is a stillwater specialist, one of the finest, and, like me, he loves a tough situation. Unlike me, however, he lacks a masochistic streak. He doesn't mind getting beaten by the trout, but he doesn't want to hike eight or nine miles uphill to do it. He never should have mentioned the goldens in Cave Lake-big cruising plankton-feeders. He shouldn't have telephoned me late one night, saying over and over, "I could see them, but I couldn't catch them." Stillwater specialists in the United Kingdom discovered ways to catch plankton-feeding rainbows in their reservoirs, but at first they were baffled by the strange new trout in their country. Soon after Blagdon was flooded in 1902, fishermen found that rainbows "disappeared" in midsummer. The normal surface and shallow-water tactics didn't work for larger fish, especially during midday, on rich, algae-clouded reservoirs. Anglers worked streamer patterns-"lures" in the King's English-on a full-sinking line. Peter Lapsley, in Trout from Stillwaters, explains the technique: ". . . the solution is to cast as long a line as possible, to let out line after the cast until we are sure that the lure is at the right depth and only then start our retrieve. Even a Hi-D line only sinks about 1 foot in three seconds and it takes a minute and a half to go down 30 feet. Count or time as the line goes through the water. By doing this we should be able to return the lure to the same depth with subsequent casts. "This method was specifically developed for the capture of rainbow trout, especially plankton-feeding ones. By mid- to late-June, the rainbows should have begun their assault on a rapidly growing plankton population. It would be quite impossible to represent Daphnia or any other planktonic animal on a hook, and even if we could there would still be little chance of persuading the fish to select our artificial from amongst the vast host of naturals in the water. But, by some extraodinary stroke of good fortune, plankton-feeding rainbows are remarkably susceptible to bright, flashy lures. Gold, orange, yellow and red seem almost always to be the most effective colours, and a Whiskey Fly or a Dunkeld fished at the right depth and retrieved quickly will frequently provide the answer to an otherwise almost insoluble problem." The pioneers of stillwater fly fishing in the United Kingdom perfected the count-down method with sinking lines. It's a consistent technique for taking trout feeding deep on a variety of foods, not just zooplankton; and it's one of the keys for taking large trout in many western reservoirs in this country. What worked on United Kingdom reservoirs, however, doesn't work on our mountain lakes. The stripped streamer catches only the rare trout on high-elevation waters. There are too many differences-the cloudy, rich soup of the reservoirs versus the clear, sterile water of mountain lakes; an environment with numerous species of forage fish versus an environment with no bait fish except small trout (and not even those in lakes with no natural reproduction); reservoirs with rainbows and browns versus alpine fisheries with the much less piscivorous cutthroats and goldens. Joel Hart verified the futility of streamers on the plankton-feeding golden trout of Cave Lake with four days of dog-crazy flogging, hundreds of casts producing not a single hit. Afterwards it was hard to convince him that these trout-the "strainers"-are catchable. I had to work hard to persuade him to take me up to plankton-rich waters like Pear, Druckmiller, and Cave lakes. These fish aren't uncatchable-and after a great morning on Druckmiller, even Joel is starting to have faith in that. We caught fourteen rainbows, the biggest ones over two pounds, Only one method worked, however, and that was "pulling the trigger" with the Rollover Scud. Joel kept saying, "We'll see if this catches those goldens on Cave." Of course the goldens on Cave are going to be the toughest trout to fool-among the plankton-feeders, goldens are always the hardest to catch. They lock so thoroughly into a slow, open-mouthed swim-and-graze that they seldom even nod at a passing fly. We moved over to the Sweet Grass Creek drainage and climbed to Cave Lake. We camped here three days and we could have pounded the water twelve hours a day in the long summer light. We didn't-we concentrated on the first few hours after sunrise and the last few hours before sunset. I did fish for a half hour during the middle of the day once just to see if the goldens could be caught then. By standing on a cliff we could see them, cruising with mouths agape, at least forty feet deep. At dawn and dusk they were shallower, no more than fifteen feet deep, and with a Teeny T-400 sinking shooting head our flies would reach them quickly enough to be efficient and effective. Just like the trout at Druckmiller, the goldens here looked at an olive Rollover Scud, but took an orange or red Rollover Scud much more aggressively. How aggressively depended on the flip or roll of the fly in relation to the fish. Nothing makes a trout react faster than a Rollover Scud if the fly flips over close enough to the fish. The pattern swims upright when it's retrieved, but it rolls over as soon as the tension is gone. Or the movement can be just the opposite-it will sink upside down, but as soon as the angler tightens the line the fly will spin into the upright position. Either way it has a built-in "action" that triggers an instinctive response in trout-even prompting a reaction from the plankton-sucking goldens of Cave Lake. Joel and I took turns sighting for each other. When the fly was at the correct depth-among, next to, or in front of the trout-the spotter gave the call. The angler pulled on the sinking pattern and the fly rolled quickly upright; and then immediately the fishermen slacked off and the fly flipped upside down again. Then he tugged sharply. With this multiple flipping movement we each caught a number of the goldens on the Rollover Scud. Our tally for three days was 24 of the "uncatchable" trout. The morning was always better than the evening because fish were in shallower water longer. We caught one midday golden, proving that plankton-feeders can be hooked in very deep water. The T-400 head, sinking at 8 inches per second, took more than a minute to reach the proper depth. Working a fly at forty feet isn't something I'd ever do regularly, but there are anglers who fish very deep water and I can only admire their patience. The smallest trout were 12 inches, but many of the fish were 16 to 19 inches. We saw some cruising goldens that looked even bigger. The Rollover Scud flips because it has a strip of heavy wire lashed to the top of the hook shank. This weight unbalances the fly. The rollover, an action we started playing with to catch the overfed trout of the limestone ponds and spring creeks of the Deer Lodge valley, doesn't depend on the trout's hunger to elicit a reaction. The Rollover Scud triggers an instinctive, snatch-it reflex in trout when it's fished right. The best retrieve, known as "pulling the trigger," is a "pull slowly, stop, pull quickly" sequence. Let the fly sink to the eye-level depth of the trout. To move the scud nearer, draw line with a smooth, slow pull, until the pattern is within two feet of the fish. Then stop retrieving, letting the fly flip over and sink. Finally, if the trout hasn't already taken it, tug sharply on the line to make the fly turn upright and jump forward a few inches. A conventional fly usually fails on golden trout-the Rollover Scud doesn't. A twist on the theory of imitation explains why plankton-feeding fish, oblivious to any regular food organism, respond at all to a certain class of "action" flies. A regular pattern depends on its visual characteristics to mimic life, and this is fine if the fish is feeding on something that can be imitated visually. The problem is that visual characteristics appeal to the urge to feed, leaving the trout a choice. For any fish grazing on zooplankton the choice is easy. He is going to ignore a conventional fly, no matter how lifelike it looks, and continue swimming open-mouthed through the cloud of minute food organisms. A fly that moves suddenly and strangely, especially if it's close, works on a deeper, more reflexive part of the brain. It doesn't mimic any single prey item-with motion it mimics not just "life" but odd and vulnerable life. It somehow jolts even a grazing fish out of his stupor and excites him into eating a larger pattern. When the trout sees the strange, quick movement of the active fly he has no choice, at least not about making that first instinctive move toward the pattern. The closer the Rollover Scud is to a trout when the fly flips, the higher the chance of a take. This is why sight-fishing with the pattern is so effective. The angler knows when the fly is in the striking zone. On some waters the Rollover Scud can be four or five feet away from the fish. When it turns over, a cruising trout will rush to take the fly. The goldens on Cave Lake weren't nearly that responsive. If the fly was within two feet when it flipped, a fish would turn to it and maybe take it. If the fly was within one foot-or, even better, six inches-when it flipped, the fish would almost always suck in the pattern. Gary LaFontaine is a nationally known outdoor writer. His latest book, Fly Fishing the Mountain Lakes, is a great resource for the oxegen-starved brains of high-altitude fishermen. ­ Home ­

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