Phil Rowley knows he has a fly line problem.
The guide, fly tier and stillwater expert from Edmonton, Alberta, carries about 20 fly lines on his boat when fishing lakes.
He packs floating lines, slow sinking lines, fast sinking lines, lines with a slow sinking tip and multiples of each. He also packs some oddball lines, like the one designed for Puget Sound coastal cutthroat that he’s found useful on inland lakes.
Each line has a purpose. Some lines perform better in the wind. Some cast farther. Some situations call for a line that sinks 7 inches every second, while others call for one that only sinks about an inch per second. All of them are on spools or reels, ready to be deployed when they’re needed.
Anyone trying to match his system is likely to either go broke or make their local fly shop’s month. Rowley is aware of this. He does think all of those lines are useful, but he pares down his official recommendation for lake anglers to three lines — a floating line, an intermediate sinking line and a fast sinking line.
“Don’t go buying every line you see unless you can see a scenario that you’re going to use it and learn how to use it,” Rowley said.
Rowley was in Spokane last week to teach the finer points of stillwater fly fishing as part of a two-day event put on by the Spokane Fly Fishers and Inland Empire Fly Fishing Club. He taught fly-tying in the afternoons and gave presentations on gear and tactics in the evenings at the Southside Community Center.
Rowley is well known as one of the masters of fly fishing lakes, having built a reputation as a guide and well-traveled angler who can dissect a lake well and figure out how to feed its fish. He’s been fishing them for more than 35 years in Canada and all over the world.
Stillwater fly fishing can seem daunting to those who are more comfortable fishing moving water. But if you want to catch trout on a regular basis in the Inland Northwest, a landscape pockmarked with fixed bodies of water, you need to learn how to fish lakes.
I have a float tube and I landed a few fish out of lakes last year, but I still feel lost when I strap flippers to my feet and walk backward into a lake. I own zero sinking lines. It took months for me to figure out how to pronounce chironomid (kuh-ron-uh-mid) and about as long to realize a wooly bugger is not the same as a balanced leech.
Point is, I had good reason to join the audience for Rowley’s evening presentations this week.
Over both nights, Rowley made the case that fishing lakes is fun and that it even has a few advantages over fishing rivers.
Runoff, which sometimes can spoil fishing on rivers for weeks, isn’t a problem on lakes. Some lakes do get muddy when they turn over, but there’s a simple solution — go to a different lake.
Lakes may not have the dry fly opportunities available on rivers, but there’s enough bug life and picky fish to satisfy even the most obsessive hatch-matchers.
“We’ve got mayflies, caddis damsels dragons leeches baitfish zooplanktin scuds, terrestrial insects … I’m sure I missed some,” Rowley said.
The second night, Rowley ran through the way he fishes with strike indicators, also known as bobbers. They come in a variety of styles, but he prefers the quick release style, which releases when a fish is hooked and makes landing a fish easier.
He also explained the best way to set up a leader for bobber fishing. The key is using the same diameter of tippet from bobber to fly so it sinks evenly.
It was clear that Rowley is a bit of a gearhead, even beyond his insistence on carrying 20 fly lines. He talked about bobber stops, tippet rings and swivels — items that are far from being obscure, but that aren’t in every angler’s vest.
It was also clear that each one has a purpose. Swivels, for example, offer a simple way to add tippet to a leader along with some weight to help get flies down.
It’s a good idea, and one I may need to test this spring.
First, I need to go shopping for sinking fly lines. Let’s hope I’ll be able to resist the urge to buy 19 of them.
