Daylight Mousin'

I was thinking about doing some small stream wild trout fishing today, but my head just wasn't in that game. I have spent a lot of the past two months doing stuff other than streamer fishing, and today I felt the need to throw some big bugs on heavy tippets for aggressive trout. I went to my favorite TMA and got to business. The fly I chose to start with is an odd one for me... I use small Clousers for trout every now and then, but I have never thrown the typical style Clouser, the kind used for largemouth and stripers. I was always afraid that the short hook would make for a lot of missed short strikes. Nope! I nailed rainbows like they were nothing in that first pool, getting chases nearly ever cast. If they took well enough I hooked up, and the almost always too well enough.

When that Clouser Minnow started to fall apart I decided t change to a single hook Barely Legal. I also moved about a half a mile upstream. Suddenly I was in brook trout central, they were all over that streamer and the takes were awesome.

I put the fly in front of a rock way on the other side of the river and a big brook trout came out and smashed it. Since I don't usually weight these streamers they don't go deep and the takes are explosive. This was no exception, and it was a very nice fish.

Then I rounded out the trout slam with a solid brown. I caught a few more smaller brookies and rainbows before I came to this one nice run.

In that run I made an observation. The fish seemed most likely to hit the streamer when it was causing a disturbance on the surface. I made a quick decision and changed to a mouse. It is a well known fact that on the East Coast mousing is a night time game. Well then, how do you explain this?

I caught a pretty ridiculous number of fish on that fly. The best part about it was that if they felt at all like hitting it, they would just trash it, often times over and over again. I was catching fish with regularity in pressured water on a huge topwater fly. I was out-fishing everyone there... with a mouse!!!

That orange tailed Morrish Mouse was the only fly I used for the rest of my outing. I think I caught about a dozen fish on it. I left the river around 3:00.