Fly Fishing at Diamond Lake

Have you ever been fly fishing at Diamond Lake? We had an opportunity to meet friends Debbi, Philip, Carol & Kim at a cabin on Diamond Lake last weekend. And we took it!

It has been a couple of months since we did a little lake fishing.

We first fished Diamond Lake in 2008 with our friend Tim. I think it was the second year the lake re-opened after killing all the fish due to bait fish (tui chub) taking it over. This is what happens when someone fishes with illegal live bait. In 2009, we caught so many of these fish.

And then this slippery little devil. The fish were strong in AND out of the water!

We fished it last in June 2012. The fishing wasn’t as good as previous years due to the regulation changes allowing an increase in harvest and year-round fishing. In the meantime, East Lake started fishing better after the population of Tui Chub were reduced and oh boy…the Callibaetis mayflies hatching at East Lake are a sight to behold!

We had planned to fish Friday after we arrived, but the lake looked like this…

You may not be able to see the white-caps out on the lake. A fire at the cabin sounded a lot better.

Planning for the trip I decided to tie a few more of my favorite lake fly – Denny’s Stillwater Nymph.

I don’t know why this fly works so well, but it certainly is a fish catcher! It’s my go-to searching lake pattern. I also tie and fish the fly with an olive marabou wingcase.

Denny’s Stillwater Nymph has accounted for many a fish.

And an olive Zebra Midge worked well when we used to fish Diamond Lake. Chironomid fishing isn’t my favorite style of fly fishing, but there is no getting around how effective it can be. I’ve been around boats fishing Chironomids and they were the only ones catching fish.

So when I go to the dark side, I usually start with an olive Zebra Midge as one of my flies.

On Saturday, we fished both versions of Denny’s Stillwater Nymph and the fish liked them equally well. Big or small fish…it didn’t seem to make any difference.

And speaking of big fish, here are a couple…

20″ Rainbow

20″ Rainbow

We ended up hooking an playing 28 fish between the two of us, landing 18. Not exactly like a few years ago.

But it was a good day!

Enjoy…go fish!

Note: In 2006, Diamond Lake was treated with rotenone to eliminate an estimated 90 million of the tui chub.

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