Late Season River Multi-species Fishing

 As water temperatures plummet in November, fish are both on the move and slowing down. They are on the move because the need to be in very different water for the winter than they were just in all summer, and slowing down because as cold blooded animals their metabolism slows when it gets cold. This results in some interesting challenges for an angler trying to catch these fish. It can also create some great fishing, because the fish's feeding drive may be just a bit slower but they often pile up in staging areas and then in their wintering holes. 

The fish species I'm really talking about here are fallfish, bass, sunfish, and perch. The late fall and early spring transitional period are, quite honestly, some of the best time windows I've found for loading up large numbers of these fish and often some trophy sized specimens. This year I was presented with the challenge of finding these fish in staging areas on new water, the same general area I've fished all summer in Rhode Island for carp. Because I'd been so focused on carp, I let a lot slide and missed chances to better figure out bites with some other species. Come November, catching would be more difficult simply because fish would be in fewer places and actively feeding less often. 

I knew the sorts of spots that should be holding fish though from past experience on other watersheds. I used google maps and pinned every spot that looked like it had potential, from in-flowing creeks and canals to backwaters and large eddies. Some would clearly be difficult to access, so I started out with the one closest to home that I knew would be publicly accessible. I fished it first in low pressure during a big storm, with a simple "float n' fly" tactic. My leader was 8 feet long, tapered to 0x, with a small Thingamabobber and a micro streamer. Often, when water temperatures are falling, any retrieve is too much retrieve. Think effective ice fishing tactics: you want a fly to be basically in place, maybe with a little bit of jigging action, but barely moving horizontally at all. 

I hit it right with the first spot, which was excellent. It wasn't crazy. The fish were neither huge nor especially numerous, but they were there and I could catch them; that's half the battle. 

Over the next week or two I poked around new spots and revisited the first with mixed results. For a while, that first place seemed incredibly consistent until in one 24 window it went from fantastic, with a three perch and ten bluegill outing being followed the very next afternoon by a complete skunking. All that changed in that time frame was a three inch river drop and a 2 degree temperature drop. That's often all it takes for fish to move on from a staging area to a wintering hole.

Some of the other spots that produced fish were more typical fallfish or sucker late fall holes, though I squeaked the odd yellow perch out of them too. That was cool, as I'm not especially used to catching yellow perch out of anything other than near-still or still water this late in the year. Pulling them up on an indicator rig from the sort of water that would be holding brown trout in a cold-water fishery was actually pretty cool. There were fallfish in all the right spots too. No monsters, but lovely specimens with typical late fall coloration. 

Inevitably these spots started to falter to as the temperature dropped even further. I've now shifted focus to other fisheries anyway, but when I get back to this river I'll need to learn another set of conditions entirely. It'll continue to be an interesting challenge. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

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