I read everywhere that lake trout in Lake Superior are only accessible to flyfishermen early in the spring when they are in the shallows eating spawning smelts. Then they go into deep water
A friend gave me a lake trout that he caught while trolling for rainbows in Lake Superior.
I emptied its stomach and it was full of adult mayflies and a few beetles.
Now this was a small trout of about 2 pounds. I wonder if lake trout reach a certain age and switch to eating other fish, but this one a least was feeding on the surface.
Fish that as adults eat baitfish, start out their lives as baitfish. Meaning they are too small to effectively feed on other fish, leaving them with the option of feeding on bugs and other small food forms. A two pound laker is probably at a stage where it’s transitioning between the two food forms. However, most fish are opportunistic feeders to some degree and will eat whatever is most readily available. I’ve seen big bass and channel cat sipping mayflies off the surface in the evenings. They are probably there to ambush the small fish that are also feeding on the hatching bugs, but why not sip a few easy calories while waiting for the real meal to swim by. So it’s entirely possible that even big lake trout eat the occasional handy bug. The problem with them being available to us flyflingers is the depths that they usually inhabit rather than the ability to imitate preferred food.
@tbwannabe
that is just the thing: At this time of year lake trout are typically found in 20 to 60 feet of water, several hundreds of meters from shore. That is why I was surprised to see this laker’s belly full of mayflies, which don’t live in water that deep.
So this trout must have moved in to feed on the suface.
As far as reeds go, Lake Superior (the north shore in Ontario at least) has a barren rocky shoreline with no weed beds.