Plop and Drop

We've settled into a drought again, and most streams are pretty much everything is very low. Fortunately though the dry conditions have been accompanied by some chilly nights, so the small stream fishing remains decent. 

Under the typical low water conditions we get just about every early fall here, the game is often convincing fish out of heavy cover, be it cut banks or logjams. Small stream brown and brook trout often react to things impacting the surface of the stream. It happens a lot, and can signal a number of things, the two most important being food and danger. Make a fly "plop" into the water, not too hard and not too soft, and it may attract the attention a fish tucked way into cover. As such, I typically fish small streamers with bead or cone heads that hit the water with just enough of a plop to attract attention, but not so much that it spooks every fish, and reaches the bottom of the water column quickly. Often enough, the fly will get slammed before it reaches the bottom. If it doesn't, I strip it in quite rapidly. Takes are rarely anything less than violent.

A little while back I fished a stretch of stream nicknamed by Alan "The  Outback", a piece of water loaded with undercuts, woody debris, and predatory brown trout. The perfect place for plopping streamers. The fishing wasn't fast and furious, and I didn't catch the sort of size I was hoping to, but I'd catch a handful of good looking wild brown trout in quick succession, then go a while without any.

With a few even colder nights recently, there are a number of places I'm looking forward to visiting. It's getting to be big trout season again. It's also my favorite time of year to night fish. So assume I'm doing a bit of that even if you don't see it here.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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