Night Fishing an Impossibility

The nocturnal habits of the wild brown trout on my 'part time' home water have continued to befuddle me. I unlock little pieces of the puzzle every now and then, but less frequently than I'd like. More nights than I'd like to admit, I've walked away not really sure I'd learned anything useful.

Last night wasn't one of those nights.

I caught nothing. I never even heard any evidence that big fish were around and active at all. But I learned a lot more than I had on previous trips. It had everything to do with biomass, and it didn't teach me how or where or when I could catch a big trout at night on this river. I learned a lot about why I almost certainly wouldn't at night at this time of the year.

And it has everything to do with biomass.

To many, it is a cardinal sin to turn on a bright white light while night fishing. But if you are smart, you will for some amount of time every night you fish. Not to tie on a fly, tippet, or undo a tangle. For that I use ambient light as much as possible, and a concealed flash light whenever necessary. I can tie on most larger flies in the dark without turning on a light of any kind. But a bright light is a very useful tool at night, simply because it lets you see what's there. And if I hadn't spent nearly an hour with a light on seeing what was there, I would have learned very little about the goings on last night. 

What I discovered when I first turned on my light last night, was that I had been standing in a blizzard. There were warning signs... the feeling of tiny things dancing on my arm hairs, thing in my nostrils that just didn't belong there, an all too frequent bit of "protein" in my mouth that got there of its own volition. Yup, there was a midge hatch going on. An apocalyptic midge hatch. Breathing became perilous any time I had a light on for more than 15 seconds. I've seen some midge hatches in my day. Midge hatches so strong it made it look like a light fog was gathering. Midge hatches that were actually audible. But nothing like this.

The biomass was not limited to the air either. The emerging midge pupa and swimming freshwater shrimp of were so thick all a trout would have to do to eat its weight in the course of the night would be to open its mouth for two seconds every other minute. Add to that about 25 fish fry per square foot in any slow moving water and there is very little reason for any trout to need to eat a big streamer or mouse or wet fly under these conditions, and anything small would just be lost in the maelstrom of actual food drifting and swimming around.  

So. I'm still not dialed in on getting big trout at night there. But I know I can't do it at this time of year in that stretch.