I took a couple days off last week and spent four days fishing at Big Twin Lake in North central Washington.
For those who don’t know the lake, it’s near Winthrop and is a great fishery. It’s a selective fishery, so either your lure or your fly has to have a single barbless hook.
It was nice to leave cool and wet Western Washington for a few days, although it rained cats and dogs Saturday night in Winthrop and was a little dreary on Sunday.
The fishing was very good.
It was a club outing for both the Everett and Bellingham fly fishing clubs (coincidentally) so there were lots of people there on Saturday and Sunday (which is why I went on Thursday).
But that didn’t stop some anglers from having days of 40 fish or more. I wasn’t one of those people, but I got my share.
There were basically three groups of fish — one was 8 or 9 inches, another was about 14 inches, and the bigger ones were 16 to 18 inches.
There was some talk of fish of 20 to 22 inches, but I didn’t catch any of those.
The surface of the lake was about 61 degrees so the water is still comfortable for the fish and they don’t have to go deep to stay cool just yet.. Not a lot of hatches, but there was a sporadic chronomid hatch every day.
I did really well on on olive damsel nymph and on a mayfly nymph, but I didn’t see damsels hatching and only one or two mayflies.
Big Twin has a great damsel hatch, so I think that’s yet to come.
I mostly fishing bloodworms and a black chironomid pupa (that’s what was hatching).Interesting note: at least for those days, a size 12 or 14 chironomid with a fine copper rib was markedly better than the same fly with a silver rib.
It was a subtle difference, but sometimes the fish are that finicky.
Most of my fish were cruising for food on a shelf in about 10 feet of water near a much steeper drop off.
Another tip: Look for bare spots in the weeds. Fish hang out there and cruise looking for chironomids just coming up from the bottom to go to the surface of the lake to hatch. The bugs are easier for them to see and the fish are easier for us to see on the bare spots.
Other folks did well fishing chironomids about 20 feet down.
It’s a great lake and I recommend it if you haven’t fished it. There are several ospreys working the lake and a couple pairs of eagles.
Basically the osprey would grab a fish out of the lake and the eagle would fly behind it waiting for it to drop the fish so it could take it.
The ospreys are a great show.
We stayed at the campground right on the lake, which is a nice place. For info: Click here
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