Fly Fishing Lakes & The Wind (What if?)

 

Wind & More Wind

Lakes and the wind. A given element almost everyday at some point. You must plan for this. The picture above: Spring time. Cold. Winds kicked up. At this point, I had come into shore to take a break. In short order the wind kicked up big time. We considered heading back, but the fishing promised epic memories. We anchored. The wind blew harder and we moved even with heavy pyramid anchors.

We decided we had to try to row the long haul back to the rig…at least a half hour of steady, hard pulling. We pulled hard and gained nothing. We lost water, so to speak. Eventually, both of us, in excellent shape, could not beat the wind. We made for the far shore to wait out the wind.

The wind did not stop. There was not an access road near our shoreline and our rig was a good mile and a half away if we walked the shoreline. We were wearing booties, the type you wear with fins. We were seriously lucky by the shoreline configuration (rocks and shallows) and walked along into the cold wind, each pulling our pontoon boat with a twenty foot section of poly rope we had each always carried but never envisioned using in this way. Had we had a treacherous shoreline and deep drop off from the shoreline, we would have been stuck until the wind dissipated.

We were prepared clothing wise and booties wise (they had good soles). We made our way back after a very long (time wise) walk. Point being: plan for the wind blowing you to hell and not back. Ask yourself what is on the far side of that lake. What if you end up over there? Is there an access road over there? If you had to wait a long while for the wind to die down, do you have adequate clothing/shelter? It was an extreme exception to normal conditions. I had never not been able to row against big winds and waves. Met my match and now have a better sense to plan: what if?

Fly Fishing & Tying (Or, Is It Tying and Fishing?)

It is both. Depending upon your weather, seasonal closures/openings and freedom to fish. An example of late for me: I have recently spent more time researching patterns I had fleeting chances at last year and was not prepared with the right patterns and/or correct presentation (Yellow Sally Stonefly, Sculpin/Streamer Patterns).

You fish and see you need to figure out an insect for the next time (what was that large, yellow, fluttering fly popping out of mid-stream? (Mayfly, but it looked like a Stonefly?). Or, you are still cut off for the season (weather, closures, work, obligations). You plan for the time span you will have to fish and study the hatches you will experience on the bodies of river you will most likely visit (example: August-October for Crooked R., Deschutes R., Metolius R.,  McKenzie R., Tunkwa L., Leighton L.  etc.).

This is part of the ongoing fun of tying and fishing (or, fishing and tying).