Yesterday marked my final trip at Lake Davis for the 2015 season, and it was a cold one. When I arrived the air temps were 15 degrees with freezing fog and snow on the ground - Talk about cold! Water levels continue to drop and the weeds are still thick in certain areas. Add to that, ice is forming around the edges and creeping further out on a daily basis. Water temps are currently at 41 to 45 degrees. Fishing was very slow for us. I talked with a few tubers at Jenkins Point who said they had caught a few fish for 6 hours of fishing.
The last two fall seasons at Lake Davis have been very uncharacteristic. September was actually good with some great dry fly fishing, but the banner month of October failed again. The last day I saw fish in the shallows was on October 15th, after that nothing. There are some important factors to consider for the lack of good fall fishing that we are so accustomed to seeing at the lake.
-Low water levels; with the extremely low water levels there is less available habitat for the fish to come into. Many flats are only inches deep and extend far away from the shoreline. The transition zones from deeper water to the fertile flats are not the same.
-The resident rainbows are feeding in deeper water, and have been consuming daphnia (zooplankton), and very small midge pupa. This happened last fall and the low catch rates were the result of such. Very strange behavior for autumn trout at Lake Davis.
-Trout populations could be very low, I have no accurate data on this but if we had a bigger population, the catch rates would show higher results.
-I hardly saw any snails this fall floating around, this food source has always been a fall staple in the past. I know they are in the system though.
I think the answer to all the above is that the lake receives rain and a good snowpack in the next 5 months, and brings water levels back up to at least 70%. We can only hope. On a side note the lack of anglers I saw this fall was staggering, it was like a ghost town up there, especially on the west shore.
I hooked my boat up after it's long stay at J&J Grizzly store (thanks Jim and Jeanne!) yesterday, and towed it down to its foothill home for the winter. I think the highlight for the 2015 season was the Damsel hatch, and the Hexagenia hatch of June - that was pretty awesome!
Until next year Lake Davis, take care sweetheart....
2 comments:
I hope this is just a temporary down cycle for Davis. Please post any information regarding what can be done to improve the stocking situation and what can be done to insure the fishery will get back on track.
Great gift guide, there’s some wonderful ideas on there.
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