I had to peel myself away from a perfectly good top-water eat that brought this handsome fellow to my net to “keep my eye on the prize” today, which obviously yielded no Bulls.
Beyond finding deep pools and stripping a big obnoxious streamer as deep as you can get it, anything else I should focus on?
At least the river is pretty… and believe it or not this Rainbow is actually only the second fish I’ve ever managed to wangle out of the Met, so I guess that’s something. Probably should’ve just fished this hatch all day…
Posted by AdmiralCrnch
4 Comments
Don’t neglect skinny water with logjams. Have caught a few on 2 ft of water that were under some logs just waiting for food to cruise by.
It took me ages to get my first bull. It’s maddening but it starts to click after a few victories. Right now Kokanee are in the system. If you find Kokanee, you find bulls.
Well, first you need to understand what kind of fish bull trout are. They are pretty much predators going after baitfish, ie Kokanee, mountain whitefish etc. look at how their jaws a big which are made for. So you would need to think what would those fish do etc. size up the fly and the rod, red/black, white etc to match the hatch. Last thing they wanna eat after a kokanee spawn are dries and small insects
Your bull trout rod should not be something that you can dry fly fish on lol so if you just take the bull trout setup that prevents you from getting distracted. I personally think if you get into a hatch on the met you should fish it but if you really want to figure out bull trout, it’s like steelhead, leave the regular trout stuff in the car or at home.
You can be the indicator dudes that look for and basically floss the fish that sit in the hatchery hole/allen springs campground/powerlines area year round with a giant bobber and 2-3 heavy nymphs that may or may not drift into the fish’s mouth (not very exciting imo and you just cast for hours at the same fish that 20 other people will catch) but there will nearly always be fish at those spots and for some people that can’t move around physically a lot this is kind of the only option on the met. If you park at the gated dirt road near lower bridge and walk downstream there are a few more spots that old guys will tell you are a secret but I’ve never seen fire rings and trash at my secret spots so go figure. The further downstream you go, the sparser the good water is for fishing in general.
The other option which is way more exciting and sporting is to cover as much bank water as possible starting in July when the lake fish migration begins and eventually run in to a few under a cutbank or a log/logjam. These fish are way more willing to bite since they haven’t seen 800 dolly lamas stripped over them yet and if they see your fly they will eat it. The downside is that you are basically trying to intercept migrating fish rather than target them at their staging areas before they spawn and so you run into less fish in general. The upside is you get a higher ratio of interested fish if you do find them. As for flies, the biggest castable white thing is all I’ve ever used. If you want to swing the deeper runs, a heavy sink line with a short taper to cast big streamers (Rio outbound is what I have) works for that, but if you’re fishing the banks/logjams, floating line is fine cause you’re mostly jigging/not in too deep of water when they eat and you can just have like a 6’ leader.
If you have the means, getting a guided trip in April on lake billy chinook will be a great shot at bulls in shallow ish water in the lake in good condition. That can be really productive too