Fly-fishing is ideally suited for this type of angling -- and it’s fun

"I use mostly nymphs," said Zieske. "There aren’t a whole lot of areas where you can catch fish on the surface in lakes. It’s pretty much fishing with sinking lines or sink-tip lines."

All kinds of nymph patterns will work. Most fishermen use the more subtle ones, which closely resemble their wild food.

"The Wooly Bugger is a staple," Zieske explained. "You can fish with Backswimmers, Water Boatmen. Some of the ponds and lakes have good Callibaetis, which is a mayfly nymph."

These mayfly-nymph and dry-fly patterns have long been among the most effective for catching Black Hills trout. Even some of the flies that don’t directly imitate this or that insect will get results, because the trout see them as a close enough match to eat. Black Hills Wonderbug wet flies are a good example -- that old pattern still works on our lakes.

Some of the smaller flies can also prove quite serviceable. Mosquitoes, of course, are common all over the Black Hills. Even smaller in size are midges -- tiny, plentiful, and kind of a fishing secret in the Black Hills. Millions of these small insects will be found in ponds and lakes, and not many fishermen use midge patterns to catch trout.

"Midges are good in some of the colder ponds in the Hills," noted Zieske. "They’re all over the place. It’s just that some of the colder ponds have less variety of hatches, but the midges are all over the Hills. That is kind of a year-round deal. You will find midges hatching almost any time you have open water."

Intimidatingly minuscule in the view of some anglers, midge patterns are often tied on size 20 or even smaller hooks -- so small that it can be a challenge just to get the tippet through the eye of the hook. If you tie your own flies, the real key to midge patterns is to keep them very sparse. One fisherman here refers to them as "thread flies" because the only thing on the hook is one wrapping of thread.

The human notion is that the bigger and juicier an offering looks, the more enticing it will be to fish, and the better it will work. But the opposite is true with midge patterns.

The most difficult thing about fishing these small patterns is that it can be difficult to hook fish. It’s not unusual to miss hooking half or more of the trout that bite, and you in fact often don’t even set the hook, because it doesn’t work that well. Usually, either the trout accidentally hooks itself, or it doesn’t get hooked at all.

A couple of things will help. Barbless hooks work best, as they meet with far less resistance to penetrating the lip of a trout. A small barbless hook has a point almost like a needle’s, so it goes into the fish very easily. Without the barb, it’s also easier to unhook the fish once you’ve landed it. (A seldom-mentioned advantage is that it’s also far easier to unhook a barbless hook from your own hide when you accidentally snag yourself, or from a nice wool sweater.)