Jenny Lake Lake Trout

My friend Rick Schreiber, the master of Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park, emailed me saying he saw hoards of lake trout on Jenny yesterday.  As you know by now, I have a soft spot for fly fishing for lake trout.  My response was simple, “Let’s go.” 

Rick and I were smoking cigars on our way across Jenny at 8 this morning.  Once again, the weather is incredible.  I wore a light jacket and removed it once we got to Ricks spot.  By now the sun was up and I could see that the bottom of Jenny was crawling with lake trout.  Rather than start chucking away, Rick and I finished our cigars and observed the nonnative char. 

Watching was a good idea, the reason being that Rick has only caught two of the lake trout in three trips out for them.  For the amount of fish we were viewing I was surprised to hear of their lockjaw.  Usually lakers in the shallows in October are gluttons for chartreuse, white or yellow streamers.  From my observation of their behavior, all looked normal.  I couldn’t understand why they’d be so tough.  But after my stogie I tossed my regular lake trout flies for at least two hours with no more than a follow.

Both lakers Rick caught in previous days were after beaching the boat and wading.  There’s no doubt that the boat may have been spooking them because it was calm and sunny.  But even so, with all these fish he should have stumbled in to more than two.  Nevertheless, we gave wading a try. 

I’d been fishing a very big chartreuse fly – a Warpath Jig Fly.  This is a cumbersome fly to cast from shore with trees behind me so I dropped down to two normal size (size 6) streamers.  One was dark olive and one was mahogany in color.  They weren’t the norm for lake trout but I had to try something different.  I had a Uniform Sink Type 5 Line and targeted the drop off right in front of us where the lake trout were cruising.  On about the fifth cast I nailed one and at the same time Rick nailed one too.

We thought we had it dialed but the truth is, over the next two hours we caught a total of about eight more cookie cutter lakers.  With the amount of fish around we should have landed 50.  Oh, and I snuck in a surprise brook trout.  Nonetheless it was an improvement from Ricks previous days and perhaps each upcoming day will get better.  What we really need is a change in weather.  It’s absolutely too nice for mid October.  And maybe when it changes some huge lake trout will appear.

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing