Hunting for New Species, A Monster Brown Trout, and Tons of Smalllmouth

On Monday, Noah and I headed west to search for some new species. We fished some water Neither of us had ever fished and some that only Noah hadn't, but I'd only been to once or twice. The initial river we fished contained cutlips minnows, a species I had caught but Noah hadn't. We utterly failed to find targetable micros in most the water we fished, but didn't fail to find trout. There were stocked rainbows and browns everywhere.

Salmo trutta

Onchorynchus mykiss

After slogging through piles of planter trout myself, and Noah not finding anything willing to eat a chunk of nightcrawler, he turned around and headed back to the car. I pressed on just a little bit farther and, surprise surprise, found a huge school of mixed micros. I called Noah. he came back down and started to weed through the mess of common shiners and yellow perch and eventually got his lifer cutlips minnow. I started to specifically target the micros as well even though I knew there wasn't likely to be a new species in the mix. I did want a better specimen of a longnose dace or a cutlips minnow to photograph though, my current ones aren't great. I didn't find either, but I did catch one handsome male common shiner out of all the run of the mill, dull looking ones that were absolutely everywhere. 

Luxilus cornutus

Noah did catch a creek chub or two and this very strange dark common shiner that had us going for a little while thinking it might be something else.

We moved on to a body of water that has some tench, an introduced invasive from Europe. We were a bit in over our heads there. I've got no experience fishing for tench, and despite doing tons of research on both fly and conventional tactics for the species, I had no idea how well they could be applied the huge lake we were fishing, especially giving iffy shore access. We were stuck with a few public boat launches and parks. We found no tench, but numerous other species did make an appearance.

Perca flavescens

Lepomis gibosus 

Lepomis auritus

Lepomis macrochirus

Fundulus diaphanus

Ambloplites rupestris

We ditched and went in search of bluntnose minnows. Spoiler alert, we didn't find any. Just blacknose dace and brook trout in the small streams...

Rhinichthys atratulus

Salvelinus fontinalis

... and smallmouth bass in the big river, the Housatonic. I rarely ever get to fish this area, so new species or not it was worth it, especially to just hammer on smallmouth constantly. Small though the bulk of them were they fought incredibly hard, which all smallmouth do, but compared to the smallmouth in my home waters... well, these ones had a lot more current to fight against to build muscle mass. 

Micropterus dolomieu

10 inch smallmouth are awfully easy to find though. But something that isn't easy to find in these part is a 26 inch brown sticking his big noggin up, somehow both recklessly and slowly eating a slurry of duns, spinners, and spent caddis. It was a classic scenario. the fish was within 4 feet of the bank, sitting right on the shelf, in a seem of current behind a boulder and submerged log. I saw him while scanning the tailout of the pool. He was exactly where such a fish should be, but I don't expect to see such a fish in CT and so wasn't looking for him. I was expecting to see some ripples and rings, made by the to-be-expected 14-18" Housatonic browns, and I didn't see any. But out of the corner of my eye I saw this monster's prehistoric looking head cut through the film, mouth open, close on a march brown dun, then slide back down, making almost no discernible disturbance to the water's surface. The fish's mouth alone looked about 6 inches long. I'm not going to lie, this fish scared me a little. It has been a couple years since I've seen a head like that sucking down a floating insect, and I was not at all mentally prepared to deal with the situation. I sat back and watched, trying to gather as much information as I could before making an approach. I re-tapered my leader to fish a dry. The cast and presentation were going to be easy enough. I could see that the fish was eating virtually every bug that cam through his slot, and was making about a 10ft loop of the spot, primarily rising on his way back upstream and primarily taking things to his left. I tied on a size 18 spent caddis. When a trout is clearly taking a broad mix of insects on the surface, I will always opt to present it a caddis, even if there are more mayflies on the water than caddis. I pulled out my camera and tried to get some decent shots of his big noggin. I never got a really good rise out of him when I had the camera on, just sips. 

I had the space to make more than one presentation, and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to slowly close in on the fish, rather than drop it right in his lane, because he was moving a long way and I knew if I got him to move two feet to his left he'd be all the more likely to take. In practice, this was great, but I hadn't taken into account that it would guarantee a complex rise (as described in Gary Borger's "Presentation"). I've not needed to set a size 18 hook on a 26 inch wild brown facing straight downstream, well, ever. And I blew it. The take was so perfect. The fish didn't hesitate at all. It was glorious, seeing that mouth close. And I did wait, just not long enough. I didn't give the fish time to turn. I felt nothing. And for a bit, I didn't think the fish possibly could have sensed any foul play. There was no harsh reaction at all. I fully expected to see it come back up. 

It never did. We even left and came back for the evening rise. That fish never showed itself again. I even sent Mark Phillipe the spot yesterday so he might catch it for me, and he sent me photos of a great fish, but it wasn't the one I saw. I have to wonder how long that fish has been in the river and how much experience it has had with angling pressure. It may well have picked up shop and moved some serious distance after it knew someone was after it. I have a feeling I missed a very rare opportunity. The river spoon-fed me an excellent shot at a very large, smart fish, and I screwed the pooch. So... yeah. The image of that fish is burned into my brain forever. It was every bit the size of my largest dry fly brown. 

Time to drown my sorrows in smallmouth bass and giant fallfish. If smallmouth every other cast and 16 inch fallfish don't make you smile, what's the point anymore?

Semotilus corporalis

Add a creek chub to my species total for the day was 14. That was pretty good. But in 14, not one new one. And no monster dry fly eating browns. There is always room to improve. Always. 

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