Getting Down at Rufus Woods
Whether you’re throwing sinking lines or fishing leeches under an indicator, you’ll need to drop down to bring fish up at Rufus Woods this summer.
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A couple days ago, Luke McKey and I took a run up to eastern Washington’s Rufus Woods Reservoir to get some much needed time on the water. We started a little late, but as it turned out we weren’t too late.
After dropping the Wooldridge in, we made a short run, got the memory set on the trolling motor, and started working the seam water, meaning places where slower or slack water meets faster water. You’ll find these seams around rocks, and in many places within 20 feet of shore. Luke spent some time working the kinks out of his new Beulah 6-weight rod, trying a few different lines to find the perfect match. Once he did, it was smooth sailing. We prospected with a few streamer patterns until Luke hooked into a nice five-pound rainbow on a black and blue Kreelex. I was next to see some action when a nice little two-pound rainbow pounded a crawfish-colored sculpin pattern.
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Luke and I traded back-and-forth, hooking fish and landing a few now and then. As we moved farther up lake, we worked over any water that looked promising. Some areas were hits, others were a miss. Then, as the sun rose higher and temperatures climbed, the catching slowed way down.
We only saw a couple other boats the whole time we were on the water, which is always a bonus. Fishing at Rufus Woods should remain productive because the water holds around 54-to 56 degrees all summer and that temperature is about perfect for trout.
If you decide to hit Rufus, I recommend fishing with nothing lighter than a 6-weight rod. If you really want to dial it in you’ll need a couple different sinking lines, plus a floating line for fishing flies under an indicator. We ran our flies about 15 feet below the surface and fished them off of 12’ to 15’ Type 3 sink tips. We stripped the flies in with 6” to 12” strips with a one-to two-second pause between strips. We also twitched the flies one or two inches, left or right, with the rod tip, every four or five strips. When we fished Balanced Leeches under an indicator we ran them about 10’ down. If you want to stop in at the North 40 shop before hitting the water we’ll check out your fly rod and suggest what might work perfectly for you. You’ll definitely want to pick up some heavy tippet, too: we used Rio’s Fluoroflex Plus 3X tippet under an indicator and ran straight 10-pound Maxima Ultragreen when fishing streamers off those sink-tips.
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For flies, we had good results on Galloup's Barely Legal in olive and white, and black. We also took some fish on Coffey's conehead Sparkle Minnow in the sculpin color and in white. The Complex Twisted Bugger in olive, black and white worked well, too. For fishing under an indicator, nothing beats a Balanced Leech. We have a good selection of those in different colors and sizes.
If you fish Rufus Woods anytime this summer I would recommend hitting the water right at sun-up and work any seam water you find. On a good day, with some solid effort, you might land 15 to 20 fish, a mix of triploid, standard and redband rainbows that range between two and 10 pounds. Good luck and hope to see you out there.