Island Park Reservoir, November 2010
For the past ten days fall fishing has been a struggle for me. Access issues, lots of snow, freezing lakes, just to name a few, but fortunately in this area of south east Idaho we have more than a few stillwater options. Island Park reservoir came through all of these issue with some numbers of rainbow and cutthroat trout and also some fish of decent size. This can be an unforgiving lake for certain times of the year, in
the spring time with high water the trout can be hard to locate and a lot of foot work has to be done. In the fall with the lake at a much lower state, the fish tend to be more concentrated and hang more towards the main channel in the slightly warmer water, deeper water than that of the shallow coves. Deep points or shear drops are key structures that hold fish this time of year and faster sinking lines, type 3's and type 4's will get you into the bigger fish. This past week it seemed that you had to get a larger, dark leech pattern down to the 10 to 18 foot level near some sort of a rocky(plenty of basalt drops around) area, hang-ups were frequent, but at least that is telling you that your flies are in the right zone.
