Deer Creek Reservoir, ID

Outing Information

Fish Caught

Rainbow Trout

Brook Trout

Cutthroat Trout

Weather

Other Patterns Tried

No other pattern information for this outing.

Fishing Partners

No fishing partners were saved with this outing.

Waypoints

No waypoints were saved with this outing.

Notes

Since it was my birthday, I decided what could be better than getting up at 4am and making the 2 hr trek to float tube Deer Creek Reservoir near Headquarters. So that's exactly what I did.

The weather was absolutely ideal for fishing: cloudy with just a slight occasional drizzle. Virtually no wind. Warm, but not hot (70's).

My fish finder said the surface water temperature was 71 degrees. It definitely felt warm, but that seemed pretty high for this time of year, especially since it hasn't exactly been a hot spring and summer so far.

Not sure if the fish finder reading is accurate or not. Seems like the trout would have been hunkered down deep if the water was that warm, but they certainly weren't.

I spent most of my time fishing the sticks and around the dam area (as these two spots always prove to be extremely productive), but fish were everywhere and extremely aggressive. Had my first fish within minutes of jumping in and it never stopped the rest of the day. By the end of the day I had landed 202 fish (a new personal record for fish caught in one day) with plenty more that got off.

Deer Creek Reservoir continues to be the place to go if you want to catch large numbers of fish.

A strip and pause retrieve seemed to work best. The fish would often hit on the pause, sometimes after letting the fly just sit there for as long as 5-10 seconds.

The fish weren't selective in terms of flies. Everything I tried worked. They did seem to go absolutely bonkers for a mohair blood leech once it had caught a few fish and the fibers started to fray out. Had probably a half dozen fish hit while my fly was just dangling in the water in front of my tube while I was trying to regroup for another cast after landing a fish.

Caught a nice selection of rainbow, cutthroat, and brook trout. Some of the cutthroat in that lake are absolutely gorgeous with bright red bellies. Would love to catch a 16"-20" cut with those colors. It would be totally stunning.

Fish size was disappointing as the largest fish landed were only about 13 inches. I know there has to be some larger fish in that lake, but I'm wondering if all the smaller, aggressive fish go after the fly so quickly that it's extremely hard to have a chance at something larger.

Or maybe there's too many fish and they don't have an opportunity to grow large.

Perhaps I'll have to try and target bigger fish by using much larger flies on one of my next trips.

I wish the fish had been bigger, but is there really anything to complain about when you catch over 200 trout in a single day?