Gonna fish Canyon Ferry Reservoir (Townsend Montana) early on Turkey day. Fish for two or three hours and then drive home to hit the kitchen. It’s cold but not freezing and the fish have moved in close to the edges where you can reach them without a boat.
If there is a light 3-6" chop (rather than glassy-smooth or gale force waves) that’s what you want. Cast out 30-50’ with a big foam bobber with a black leech or white minnow hanging 10’ or so below the bobber. Let the bobber and the chop jig the fly for you. The fish there are so fat they’re a bit like steroid freaks. A 20" fish from the lake can weigh twice its river counterpart. They’re planted too. So you can bring home a big one for stuffing with a lightly curried onion mushroom white and wild rice pilaf. Hot green and violet-blue are the deepest-penetrating colors. And those colors do seem to add a little extra mojo at depth like that.
The Slinkie is a good jigging fly. It’s built on a top of a snelled hook. Has a long slinkie tail too. So it undulates with an end-to-end ripple as the choppy waves jig it up and down.
Look below the fly photo on the original thread-head post. There is a link there now–pointing to some step by steps.
Designing flies that are simple, fast and easy to tie is an important fly tying rule I try to follow. Most of the time any way.
But rules are made to be broken. And…
Caught a fat 20" rainbow on the above fly, Sunday. Yesterday. Nov 27th, 2011. The wind was blowing hard from the south. So we and everybody else went to Confederate Cove on the East side of Canyon Ferry Lake, Missouri River Montana, which is largely protected from a South wind. Everybody else there was bait fishing with lead, nightcrawlers and garlic marshmallows, which are used to float the worm up off the bottom.
Everybody looked at us like we were nuts because we were fishing with fly rods. Especially so with the wind blowing so hard. There were big 4’ waves with white caps out in the middle of the lake. But we had big rods. Fished foam bobbers with a 10-12’ leader and weighted streamers, like the above. I missed a strike on the first cast. One of the bait fishermen yelled at me: “Hey, you got a strike didn’t you!”.
Two or three casts later I landed a 20" fish. All of sudden we were part of the club. Pretty interesting crowd. There were two Japanese Americans a dark-skinned African man with an accent and maybe 15 regular blonde-headed rednecks. We all had a blast. People were sharing coffee, Copenhagen, donuts and Gator Aid–trying to fish with one hand while holding their hats on with the other. The big dark leech (above) is a bit involved to make. Willy fished a similar green-headed woolly bugger (among other things) and caught two more fish than I did. The wind was so bad it stirred up the mud around the edges and the fish stopped biting. So we called it a day early. Those lake fish are so fat and strong it’s amazing.
Sounds like a typical day float tubing on the Blackfeet Res. ; also sounds like you made the best of some crappy weather and had a good time. Thanks for the trip report and pic of what looks like a killer fly.
Thanks also for the trip report. I’ve never fished Canyon Ferry but your report almost makes me want to - just not with those 4’ waves. Usually, when I head up that way it’s to fish the river below the other 2 dams.
I’d rather fish down below the dams too. Most of the time. But there are two narrow windows of interest at Canyon Ferry: Early Spring and late Fall. Most of the time the big lake rainbows are too far out and too deep to catch from the bank. Particularly so with a fly rod. In April and November they come in close to the edges, for some reason.
Also…a few guys I know have been catching walleyes on streamers–in the river between York’s Islands and Townsend (above the lake). Two of them (two seasons back) caught a 14lb walleye right above town, less than a mile from the takeout. They got together with their wives and barbecued it the next night. A day after that they found out a 14lb walleye would have been a world fly rod record for 8lb test.
; also sounds like you made the best of some crappy weather and had a good time. Thanks for the trip report and pic of what looks like a killer fly.