A lot of river anglers look at a big reservoir and freeze. There are no riffles, no seams, no obvious lies — just a wide sheet of water and a lot of wind. On this episode our guest, who guides the high-country reservoirs of Colorado's South Park, made the case that stillwater is one of the most underrated opportunities in fly fishing. It's nearly impossible to get crowded out on a lake, the food base is enormous, and the fish grow big on it. Best of all, he shared a retrieve that keeps you active and connected instead of watching an indicator all day: midge stripping.
Read a Lake Like You Read a River
The biggest mental shift is realizing that lakes aren't featureless. Our guest pointed out that the same things you look for on a river — changes in water speed, shelves, drop-offs, extensions — exist in lakes too. You're just reading them through the surface instead of seeing them in the current. Trout in stillwater cruise feeding lanes and feeding lines rather than holding in one spot, so you're looking for edges: where a weed flat falls into deeper water, where a point extends off shore, where wind pushes food against a bank.
In the shallow, clear reservoirs he fishes, sunlight penetrates all the way to the bottom. That drives huge weed growth, and the weeds drive an unbelievable volume of bugs — scuds, damselflies, callibaetis mayflies, leeches and, above all, midges. Almost everything a lake trout eats moves. That's the whole logic behind stripping instead of dead-drifting.
The Setup: Hover or Intermediate Line and Two Flies
The rig is simple. Our guest likes an intermediate sinking line — a Type 1 or Type 2 depending on depth. Because his local lakes are fairly shallow, a hover line or a slow intermediate is perfect: it sinks just a couple of feet and then stays in the water column rather than plunging to the weeds.
Run two flies. The top fly is a midge pattern. The bottom fly can be something weighted — a leech is his go-to — which puts the leader on roughly a 45-degree angle as it sinks. You don't want the flies hanging straight down; you want them tracking almost parallel out in front of you. A longer leader keeps the flies higher and slower in the column, a shorter one gets them down faster.
The Retrieve: Slow, Long, and Full of Pauses
Here's the key point he stressed: midge stripping is not stripping like you would a streamer. It's incredibly slow.
- Count it down. Cast, then count while the line sinks. With an intermediate you may count longer; with a faster Type 4 you'd count shorter. Keep track of your count so you can repeat the depth that produces.
- Make one long, slow pull. Either hand-twist crawl the line or, as he prefers, hold the rod low in front of you and draw in a foot and a half to two and a half feet of line in one smooth motion.
- Stop and let it sit. Put a real break between strips. The flies rise slightly on the pull, then drop and hang as they settle.
- Watch for the hit on the next pull. Almost every take comes the moment you start moving the line again. The first strip gets the trout's attention, it watches the flies fall, and when they move again it commits.
That rise-and-fall is exactly how a midge pupa behaves as it wriggles toward the surface, which is why the technique works so well when fish are keyed on midges. He described putting a client on it and hooking a trout in the high-20-inch range about ten minutes in.
Find the Depth, Then Stay There
Fish in a lake sit at a specific band of the water column, and that band changes from one part of the lake to another and through the day. The countdown is how you find it. Start shallow, add a few seconds each cast until you start getting grabs or touching weeds, then lock in that count. If the bite dies, move — the fish in the next bay may be sitting at a completely different depth. As our guest put it, once you understand where fish are in the water column, stillwater stops being intimidating.
Indicator rigs still have their place, and there's nothing wrong with hanging chironomids under a bobber. But if you want to cover water, stay engaged, and feel the grab, give midge stripping a try on your next lake day.
Gear
The one piece of gear that makes this work is a hover or intermediate sinking line on a spare spool — if you don't own one, your local fly shop can match a Type 1 or Type 2 line to your rod and set you up with a few midge and leech patterns that work on your water. For more rigging and retrieve fundamentals like this, grab our Tips and Tricks for Fly Fishing eBook. And lake mornings start early and cold, which is exactly what the FFIP Anglers Coffee Mug is for.
