Big Farmington Browns on the Move

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Dad and I made a Farmington run today (10/13/2019). Things worked out quite well, frankly. The day he had time to kill had about the nicest conditions we could have asked for. Maybe had it been cloudy and foggy the fishing would have been better, but maybe not. With fall colors near peak and the rain during the latter half of the week telling the browns it's getting to be near spawning time, quite low water, and a wonderful warm afternoon with high clouds and very little wind, we couldn't go wrong. It was going to be a very pleasant day.

We turned up at the river fashionably late and found it pretty well devoid of anglers. For a warm Sunday, I was impressed by how much breathing room we had. I guess the low water and other pursuits were keeping some people away. Low water doesn't scare me off larger streams and rivers though, as long as the water is cold I'm confident. Quite low water has lead to some of the best dry fly fishing I've ever had, and, believe it or not, some extremely good streamer fishing as well. I've been in plenty of situations where flow increases turned what seemed like a fish-less river into a streamer slayfest, but in the fall on the Farmington I'm every bit as confident in low water as I am with average flows and more confident than with high flows. I know what the fish want to do, which is get to good spawning places. I know where a handful of those places are and where fish stage before they set up on gravel and cut redds I know they're hormonal and therefor pretty "snappy" and aggressive. I think moving fish feed more opportunistically than fish that have been on the same feeding station all day, at least that's what I've observed. So I really should have expected today to be as tremendous as it was. I was also due... the Farmington has been giving me the business for a few years now. It had been a very long time since I'd last caught a large wild fish out of this river. And I'd had chances, many of them. I consistently screwed myself out of big Farmington fish for... I think four year. Yup. That long. In that time span I got a few big stockers (yuck), plenty of small to mid-sized wild fish, and lost probably 30 fish north of 18" and about a dozen WELL over 20", including one that would still be my biggest wild trout had I actually gotten it pinned well, and a few that would be runners up. But let's not dwell. Today was a new day, I was fishing with my dad and it was gorgeous out there.

From the start my strategy was simply to pound pockets and riffles with simple medium size streamers. I worked the fly fast, sometimes on a two hand retrieve, banging a couple casts to each lie then moving on to the next. Honestly, regardless of whether I'm nymphing, fishing wets, or fishing dries, if I'm prospecting this is how I do it on most streams on most days, and I do it wicked quick, quick enough that I know it bothers my fishing partners sometimes. That is completely unintentional. I learned very quickly that my patience with the kind of minutia that some put into even prospecting was limited, so I instead try to put my flies in front of as many fish as I can, using my willingness to take a physical beating to my advantage. For the first half hour today I think I moved 15 fish, most of which did eat the fly, and I missed all of them. That's the roll I'd been on for almost four damn year on this river. But then I broke out of it, right when it mattered most. I dumped the fly into a seems at the top of a run and saw a large fish roll on it immediately. I stripped the fly quickly down hoping the fish would chase, which it didn't. I re-cast and just let the fly tumble down.  This time the fish followed it down and took a swipe. I set into nothing, and the fish started frantically trying to figure out where that piece of meat had gone. I plunked it in front of the fish, watched it take, and set hard. The fight was nothing special, there wasn't much of a chance for the animal to right itself and run or jump in just five or six inches of water. But it really isn't about the fight for me with trout. The less of it there is the less I have to worry about losing the fish. So I made quick work of this one.

So that was a start. Not giant but not at all small, and gorgeously colored up and thick. Just the way I like them. I worked up and down that stretch quickly and got three more smaller but not small wild browns and one rainbow then headed down to where my dad was. He hadn't gotten anything in the pools, but I suspected the fish in the fast water weren't done yet, I certainly hadn't put them all down. We opted to rest the water there and fish a different similar stretch in the meantime. That ended up being a fruitless endeavor, but when we got back to the hotspot nobody was there and my confidence was high. I got to watch Dad play a little chess game with a large male in the primary run, a game he damn near won. We both saw the fish rise once initially, the kind of spectacular downstream head and tail style eat that will replay over and over in my dreams. He then got that fish to move off station for a Royal Wulff, then take a small nymph behind it. The fish won the battle and won it swiftly. But it was quite a show, very much worth the price of admission.

I continued upstream, casting to each lie I'd found a fish in previously. There were fish in all the same spots and some new ones, but most interestingly the fish in spots there had been before were often very plainly not the same fish. These guys are on the move. The spawn approaches. There were even a few early unoccupied redds. Fish will probably set up on redds after the rain and cold we should get on Wednesday.

Near the top, I stripped the fly through the gut of great mini-run, and a fat fish followed it out. She ate, I set, and with more depth to work with than the previous big fish this one actually had some room to pull. But I still had the upper hand, with my 15lb tippet and 5wt. A fat egg wagon hen was soon at hand. Another gorgeous specimen of wild trutta. 

I would have gladly ended on that fish, but the river wasn't done yet. It threw me one final bone, in the form of an even longer, fatter, and more colorful hen.

And that was that, we wrapped up the best Farmington trip I've ever had in terms of high quality fish. Neither of us skunked, we tested our wit against some large wild trout, and the weather was pristine. Considering this is only the third or fourth time I've fished the Farmington this year, I'm very pleased. I may not even get back there this year and I'm fine with that.