lakes

My friend Paul Miller has written an article about fly fishing for trout using float tubes and wanted me to take photos to include in the article. We have taken our float-tube fishing to an extreme technological level, where the float-tubes are fitted with depth sounders. An earlier post “Float-tube Fun” explains a bit more about float tubes. Anyway, Paul submitted his article to FlyLife. The editor thought my photos were great and is intending to publish the article.

Several friends have also got depth sounders fitted to their tubes. A small motorbike battery powers them. The sounders are cleverly attached with a strap that wraps around one leg of the tube. It is threaded through a plastic box that holds the battery and a plate where the sounder is mounted. The transducer is also looped through the same strap. The pressure in the inflated tube holds the strap and entire assembly in place.

We enjoy having sounders fitted to our float-tubes. Others claim this is nonsense and is simply cheating!. Yes, it is true you can often find fish sitting at a particular depth. For example in summer fish will find a depth of water that is a suitable temperature. Lakes can have stratified layers of water. In this case it would be pointless to fish a dry fly on the surface if all the fish are sitting at a depth of 3m. In this circumstance you would start with a buzzer array under a float indicator. However, there is still no guarantee that the fish will be biting!.

Fish are naturally attracted to underwater structures. These include sudden changes in the lake bed, weed bed edges as well as logs and rocks. The best use of the sounders is to find these structures.

I managed to hook a very solid rainbow whilst I was taking photos. As I have mentioned before it is very difficult to fish AND take photos! Also thanks to Nick for getting me back out on the water. My float-tube developed a small hole in a fold (on a seam). Nick had a tube of UV wader repair glue. This ended being a very quick fix.