Synthetic Winter Dry Fly Fishing

 When I took a few steps down the bank to the a tributary of the river I was intending to fish a few days ago and saw a sizable trout  rise under the bridge upstream from me, I was sure I'd just found something special. This small stream boasted a pretty good wild trout population. At the time I first saw the fish surface, I didn't know it ever got stocked. The assumption was this had to be either a wild resident, a large holdover, or wild fish from the larger river just downstream. I sat and watched for a while. I was on the phone with my grandmother anyway, which made it easier to be patient, but I like to observe a riser for a bit before I make my shot. By the time we'd said goodbye, three more fish had risen and I'd determined that they were feeding on midge emergers. I was already in a good enough position. I'd have to cast over a small log but that wouldn't be much of an issue. Heart pounding, I tied on a size 24 midge. I waited for the fish to rise again, he was doing sets of three, and made my presentation. The fish came up and sipped, I set the hook, and everything changed the moment I saw the fish. It was a grey, disproportionate brown trout with worn fins. A stocker; not even a holdover. I looked up and another fish rose in the same spot. I shook off the brown I had on, changed to a size 14 Sedgehammer, and promptly hooked a 14 inch rainbow. 

Now I understood. This wasn't real, but it wasn't a dream either. This was a synthetic winter dry fly bite. These trout hadn't been born in a river, they grew to size rapidly on a diet of small brown pellets. These fish weren't conditioned to spurn insects on the surface when there weren't enough to make it worth expending their energy. These fish were used to looking up for food at all times. I could have put on a dry twice the size and it still would have worked. I almost certainly could have found a mouse perfectly tempting right there and then. My shoulders slumped a bit. This really wasn't what I'd hoped for.

I fished on for a bit, if for no other reason than to get that dry fly hook set muscle memory back. I chucked a streamer in the pool briefly too, just to see if there was a really big brown in the mix somehow. But after a while I couldn't take it anymore. I headed down to the larger river to see if I could find something wild there. 

No, this is not a tiger. This is what happens to brown trout after years of genetic muddling.

I didn't. All I got were freshly stocked browns and rainbows. Even more than a mile downstream from any stocking location, I got grey, nub-finned browns. I caught 33 fish that day. Not one of them felt fulfilling or challenging. I just happened to be fishing water that had been stocked that very morning. My February dry fly fish was out of the way but my itch to beat on hatchery trout the way I used to doesn't exist anymore. I can't wait to find some real big wild fish rising to a real hatch in the very place they were born. I need it so, so badly.

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Spottail Shiners and White Perch Through The Ice

I like variety... if that wasn't already clear to those of you that have been reading my musings for a while. Size doesn't matter all that much. Though I love big fish, I love small fish too. I want need to catch both. Winter is generally lacking in species and size diversity in Connecticut, especially compared to spring and late summer into early fall. Mostly I'm catching brook trout, brown trout, bluegills, and yellow perch all winter. Sure, some of those might be trophy sized individuals, but after a time I want something different, even if it's tiny. It was for that reason that I wasn't at all disappointed when my friend Rick and I set up over likely crappie territory but instead started pulling spottail shiners up through the ice.

It was a cloudy day, we had a rising tide, and it seemed like really good conditions to get some large crappies. I don't think we ended up getting even one, but we had steady action from other species. The shiners came in waves. There'd be long lulls interrupted by flurries of constant nibbles. I'd started out with plastics but just wasn't sealing the deal with them so switched to spikes instead. That worked well. 

We tried moving around to see if we could get on top of a school of crappies. Our third pair of holes was the most interesting. Though they were only about two feet apart, I was reaching bottom about a foot before Rick. We were definitely on some sort of structure- what, exactly I wasn't sure. This was, unsurprisingly, the best hole of the day. Though it did produce lots of shiners and a couple bluegills, white perch were the headliners. I'd caught only a couple through the ice prior and I didn't get that many to add to that total. One of them, though, was pretty darn nice. Long, fat, and full of fight, it outclassed every other fish I'd caught that week by a wide margin. Big white perch fight really hard. I have quite the soft spot for them.

So, although this day didn't give up what Rick and I had hoped for it was a respite from what I'd been experiencing. Over the coming week or so I'd get a little bit more variety, and some bigger fish as well. For those of you who aren't that interested in the ice fishing posts, I'll mix in some more recent trout outing for, well, variety.

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Bluegills in a Blizzard

 Sometimes I just have to say screw it and go fishing regardless of the weather. I’ve basically been doing this professionally, anyway. Neither snow nor sleet nor heavy rain nor tornado warning has kept me off the water. Frankly I enjoy fishing in bad weather. It excites and rejuvenates me. And if I’m honest, it also makes me feel at least a little bit badass. So when Connecticut was being pummeled by a gnarly snowstorm on the first of February, I was going fishing. I wasn’t going to drive anywhere, it was too nasty. I wasn’t going to fish open water either, I just didn’t feel like it. I was going ice fishing. The closest options are all pretty mediocre hardwater fisheries. There are plenty of fish in them, they just seem trickier to ice fish than other bodies of water I’ve been on. But there was one place that was as near a guarantee as I could get and it was within walking distance. 

So I set out into the winter wonderland. The howling wind blew both the snow that was falling and that which was already on the ground. I could hear plow trucks in the distance and the wind in powerlines and trees, but not much other than that. In about 15 minutes I was at my destination. Spudbar in hand, I cleared a bit of snow from the inside of a vertical concrete tube about four feet in diameter. Then I spudded a hole in the 5 inches of ice underneath that. I then lowered my little tungsten jig down there. A few minutes later it came back up with a bluegill attached. A few minutes after that I got another. They were all tiny, but I’d caught some fish and that’s all I really needed.

 I looked out over the rest of the pond this little weird culvert-like pipe was in. Streaks of snow whipped across the ice. I’d never caught much any time I tried to fish any other spot in this place. I briefly considered trying along the dam somewhere, but decided to head back home. 

I walked back in my own footsteps. Though they weren’t even 45 minutes old, they were already just shapeless potholes in the ever deepening snow. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Regained Mojo

 The very evening after my atrocious performance on a sandy lowland stream, I got a short opportunity for redemption. The water I'd be fishing was also small but far more rocky and fast flowing. Additionally, it was much less urban. This stream is dominated by brown trout though it has a far more robust brook trout population. I was still a bit frustrated by my prior performance, but determined to at least catch a couple fish. Time and daylight were limited. I'd need to fish with an efficiency I'd lacked just hours prior. All it takes to do that is to stop, take a breath, and get out of my own way. When I'm on, I'm really on. Everything comes naturally. When I'm too unfocused, or sometimes too focused, I overthink things and get physically more aggressive: I put more power into casts than necessary, I walk more forcefully, I make changes in fly selection or presentation that aren't necessary. There's a happy medium of focus, and when I'm in it I'm a pretty decent angler.

The fly I chose was, of course, the Ausable Ugly; my ultimate small stream brown trout confidence fly. I'd not doubt the effectiveness of the fly as it was one well proven. As I worked upstream through a set of good plunge pools and runs, I wasn't getting the action I'd hoped for. Knowing this stream sees more pressure than many of those I fish, I wasn't concerned that my angling was at fault. Someone else could well have just fished this very water an hour prior and the trout could still be on edge. Finding undisturbed fish would take a little time, perhaps, but wasn't impossible. Eventually I came to the piece of water in the photo below.

A place like this has multiple good lies for trout to use and on occasion, each one will be occupied by an active fish. The first obvious seem runs along the right side of that fast current tongue. Slower water flowing from the right meets that fast water on the left side of the photo. There is enough depth there, and the converging currents both deliver food and create a soft cushion of slower water where they meet. This is a prime feeding lie and that's where I caught the first fish. 

To the right of that current seam but less visible in the photo since part of it is in shadow under the log, is another prime lie where two currents of equivalent speed meet at a 45 degree angle. I dropped the Ugly in the V and it was taken on the drop. Another wild Salmo trutta of similar size came to hand.

This wasn't the only time this little piece of water produced multiple fish while other parts of the stream under performed. Notably, right around Christmas 2017, I caught four browns out of this stretch of stream on an egg. There are some stretches of river that are simply better for holding trout- whether they are easier places to catch them is another story. 

I felt good... finally. I'd fished well. Two beautiful wild trout were fooled and both came to hand.  I'd regained my mojo. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Lost Mojo

 Some days just suck. Whether the fish are feeding or not, other factors control whether an angler catches. Even the most well-versed, skilled, and knowledgeable fly fisher has days that just suck. And I'm far from the most well-versed, skilled, and knowledgeable. This post is about one of those days where my mojo was absent. 

It was another in a string of mild days in January. I ventured to a lowland stream dominated by brown trout, though not devoid of brookies as I'd been the first to document their presence in 2018. It is a high yield fishery. High nutrient levels, abundant baitfish, and more than a mile of water with ideal spawning gravel means it holds hundreds of fish. It can be a difficult stream to fish but I don't usually struggle. This time though, I sucked. I caught two small browns in the first run, and perhaps gave myself a confidence I didn't deserve. 

From that point forward, my success plummeted. The largest fish I fooled broke off, and it really wasn't that big. On 4x tippet I had no excuse. I spooked fish. I put flies in trees. I put flies in submerged logs. A row of 18 Hare's Ears in my nymph box turned into a row of 10 and one bent out. I missed fish and lost fish. I got more and more frustrated and it only made me fish worse. I eventually did get a third brown to hand, but it was another of less than notable proportions. 

At one point, I found a couple small fish rising in a typical pool tailout and decided to give them a go. I waited and watched for a while and singled out the fish that was rising most often. It was also closer to me, conveniently. I didn't quite have the flies I needed but I thought a small foam beetle should work. These were tiny brown trout in relatively unpressured water, they should be easy, right? 

I put the fish down on the first drift.

The reality in fishing will always be this: you will have bad days. Lots of them. Some will leave you very irritated- as irritated as this day left me. What I needed to do is think about fixing the errors I made and trying to treat the next new day on the water as though it were a chance to improve upon those mistakes. And that's what I'd do... more to come. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

One Exceptional Brookie

 My partner Cheyenne and I went for a hike one day, and nearby the trail we walked was a lovely little stream. I'd fished other sections of it and had caught a few fish. However, I hadn't explored this section nor investigated any of the stream thoroughly. I knew it had both wild brook trout and wild brown trout. Much of it was on state land, as well. It was a prime location for some more careful examination. The short section we saw was shaded with hemlocks and laurels. The stream meandered through the woods, with tight curves creating deep water. Gravelly riffles made for excellent spawning habitat. I was confident there'd be salmonids here and I was sure brookies would be the dominant species. I fished it briefly that day but didn't catch anything. 

I returned the very next day. The water had fallen a bit and I didn't have much time but I was determined to get just one fish before I had to leave. I was wader-less, not needing or wanting to disturb a stream bed likely to contain concealed redds full of developing brook trout fry. I negotiated the brush and made bow and arrow casts, drifting and twitching an Ausable Bomber through likely water. 

I covered quite a bit, and only spooked one small fish when I started to feel my time was running out. I came to a slick bend flat, not deep but still the sort of water brook trout use in the winter. I got down in a crouch and into casting position. A careful bow and arrow cast put the bomber in the fastest current and I fed line to drift the fly down the flat. When it reached where the current met the bank I twitched my rod tip and drowned the fly. I then began slowly stripping the fly upstream. This was greeted a few strips in by a boil and a jarring pull. I set the hook and a brookie of exciting size broke the surface. Soon at hand was a fish that gave me the adrenaline rush I'd really been needing. He was a stunner. Not every wild brook trout is created equally, and this one was a special individual. 

Having accomplished more than I'd expected, and just in the nick of time, I headed back to the car. I was grinning ear to ear. I could have skipped the whole way, I was so pleased. Some fish tickle me a little more than others. That one was exceptional. An extraordinary native char from a beautiful and delicate habitat. This is one of the fish I've sworn to protect and will fight for until my last breath. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

First Ice 2021

 It had just started to get properly cold in mid January when Garth and I went looking for our first stripers of the year. It was too cold, as it turned out- the spot was frozen over. In a desperate bid to catch something, I suggested we visit a productive winter panfish spot I’d been told about but had never fished. That turned out to be frozen too, so much so a lot of it seemed walkable. We didn’t bother testing it though, this little cove was criss-crossed by docks that allowed us to fish it without actually getting on the ice. We only had fly rods but both of us managed to get yellow perch. 

Two days later, I returned, this time with Noah. We had the right gear and were hopeful that the fish would be on. They were, both of us were promptly catching panfish. I was using a tungsten jig and switching back and forth between the Eurotacke Eurogrub Jr. in white and Gammascud in chartreuse. Bias aside (I worked for Eurotackle and remain friends with the owner), these plastics hammer fish. They’ll go toe-to-toe with spikes a lot of the time and often enough even out-fish them. I fished some small tungsten bead nymphs as well.

Yellow perch dominated, followed in abundance by bluegills, pumpkinseeds, and crappie. I also got a small golden shiner. The native pumpkinseeds were gorgeous specimens. They weren't big but they also weren't tiny. Pumpkinseeds are a stunning and underappreciated fish locally. Their colors often rival those of wild trout. Their patterns and depth of color vary drastically from fish to fish. Unfortunately, overcrowding and hybridization with bluegills keeps pumpkinseed numbers relatively low in waters they would have historically been the dominant sunfish. 

Ice fishing has been very good for me. Not only has it allowed me to stay out on the water on days I wouldn't want to fly fish but it has opened up new learning opportunities. It has allowed me another window into fish behavior. In any case where it is possible to fly fish (or at least closely approximate it), that's what I'll do. If not, I'm still going to fish. I want to learn as much as I can. That's what this is all about for me. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

A Slow Day at Home

My home river will never be what it was when I first fished it. I’ve accepted that fact. What it means to me though will never change. There isn’t another wild trout stream nearby that runs a long distance uninterrupted by road crossings or private land. There aren’t any major trails either- access takes effort. I feel secluded when I’m there. Although the wild brown and brook trout aren’t as plentiful as they once were and stocked fish have taken hold in parts of the stream where they never used to be found, it will forever be my home river.

I paid a couple visits in December with poor results, but decided I ought to return in January. I wanted to fish it with the same simple nymphing methods that I’d first learned there. My leader was just 6 feet long, but carefully tapered down to a long 4x tippet. I’d only fish one fly and either use the end of my fly line, the leader knots, or my instinct to detect strikes. Since I haven’t nymphed this way in awhile, I can tell that my knack for this bare-bones tactic has slipped away. I’m more than a little bit rusty.  I set out to gain back those reflexes on the very water I’d developed them in the first place. 

It took me a bit to find what I thought was my groove. I reached a classic ledge run that used to have a log socked in between some boulders essentially dividing into two runs, one below and one above. A freeze followed by a flood managed to blow it out. That log was there ten years ago, when I caught my first wild brown trout out of what had been the upper run. It’s amazing how drastically things have changed since then, but there are still wild brown trout using that water and one found my Sexy Walt’s Worm to its liking. The take was subtle and almost undetectable. Not missing it bolstered my confidence. 

Then I went a very long time without catching anything. Eventually, I gave in and decided I’d go downstream to a pool I knew held some rainbows. I’d released the brown, but if I caught any rainbows they’d be coming home with me. I used to release everything I caught here and now I’m convinced I shouldn’t be. The state shouldn’t even be stocking it. Though my nymphing had been less than satisfactory for the wild fish, these naive rainbows fell right into my trap. I took four. That’s four less rainbows in the system eating dace, brookies, and macroinvertebrates. I feel bad for the fish themselves, it's not their fault. But they just shouldn’t be in this water to begin with. Some will disagree with my approach, but I’ve seen too much evidence. The negative impacts of hatchery trout are undeniable, and the fisheries managers believe us anglers are catching them and taking them out of the system anyway. “Put and take” is an absurd way to manage an ecosystem, but I’ll oblige to save even a few fingerling native brookies. The end goal, though, is for these waters not to be stocked at all. If we are going to treat trout as though they are livestock, we shouldn’t be putting them in wild streams where many, if not most, won’t even be caught and kept. And if we are going to treat trout like a resource, we need to manage that resource in a naturally sustainable way. Stocked trout die in mass every summer in waters that can't sustain them, and not before each one eats thousands of native organisms. This isn't right. 

My home water is locked in snow and undoubtedly full of ice as I write this. Hopefully I’ll be able to return there soon, before the season closes. If it closes this year. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Spillway Multispecies Fishing

 Spillway holes in Connecticut are sporadically productive. It seems that throughout the Midwest, most spillways hold fish well through the winter, but in New England only a small percentage do. It has taken me quite a few years to find some that do hold bass, panfish, suckers, and shiners year round. To make things more complex, some of the spillways only appear to hold fish some years, regardless of conditions. I wish I could say visiting any spillway hole that isn’t frozen is a sure bet for some fish, but that’s definitely not the case in Connecticut. Fortunately I have a couple ringers, and when I’m not in the mood for holdover stripers, trout, or ice fishing, they are there to save my sanity. 

The thought process behind looking for fish in spillway holes in the winter is pretty simple. When the water temperature drops in smaller streams and rivers, the deepest, slowest pools offer the best refuge for warm-water species. Spillway holes are often deep and slow and some have slack or near slack water as well. The thermocline of the lake or pond above also plays a role if the dam isn’t exclusively releasing surface water. In the winter, the water at the bottom of the lake is typically warmer. In essence, the best winter spillways are micro-tailwaters. I know one such micro tailwater in Connecticut and a few top spill dams that hold panfish, bass, and golden shiners at least most winters. 

Noah and I visited one such spillway on a mild day in mid January and found plenty of fish there but didn’t catch much. A few days later I went back on my own. I was in the mood to catch anything that wasn’t a trout, but I was particularly hopeful to get at least one nice golden shiner. I would fish a very small indicator and a size 14 Walt’s Worm. Like a float n’ fly in the late fall or early spring on a pond or the jigging through the ice, an indicator and tiny nymph is subtle enough not to disturb the fish and slow enough they don’t have to move much to eat. The indicator is key, the fly needs to suspend. There is rarely enough current to dead drift a fly in the column without an indicator.

Initially it was sluggish. I could see some very small white suckers flashing but I wasn’t getting takes. It turns out many of the bluegills and crappies were all just jammed into a very small area of less than three square feet. As soon as I began casting to a specific part of the pool, it was a fish almost every cast. Bluegills dominated, though there were a couple very small crappies mixed in. 

I kept going beyond the point where the bite seemed to die hoping for just one golden shiner. I was still getting the occasional take but not many after fish 23. I crept up on number 30 with 7 more bluegills in half an hour. My 30th fish was a golden shiner! It seems 30 is a number of significance when it comes to panfishing in particular. This is something Noah noticed first. If you want to catch something unusual or bigger, one in 30 fish will be something atypical. Sure, it’s not a law, but it seems pretty darn consistent. 

With my golden shiner acquired I decided to head to another dam to see if it was fishing well at all. This one had been sporadic for me but at least usually holds trout. Sure enough, that’s all I caught -stocked trout. One was a tiger. I can’t seem to escape those buggers. A little bummed that there weren’t any wild fish of any kind willing to eat and losing my light anyway, I headed home. My spillway adventures are not done yet this winter though. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Winter Rise Forms

 Trout rise in many different ways. The behavior of surface feeding salmonids is dictated by a number of variables. The type and volume of insects is one important factor. Mayfly rises are typically more like gulps or sips. Caddis rises are often splashy. When trout are taking hopping or skating stoneflies, it’s more like an explosion than a rise. Large insect volumes sometimes mean fish slow their rise forms; the slurry of food drifting past them means any time they choose to surface they are likely to intercept an insect. Current speed is another factor. Rises in fast current are, as one would guess, faster and appear more aggressive than rises in slow or moderate current. Today, however, the factor in question will be water temperature.

The clearest example of how water temperature affects rise forms I've experienced was on a small mountain stream in Montana in 2018. My dad, my friend David Gallipoli, and I were fishing for native Yellowstone cutthroat trout with dry flies. The morning started out below freezing. Though my instinct was not to fish dries with the water and air so cold, David insisted these fish would come up. I tied on a dry dropper rig with a big Chernobyl ant as the top fly. It was almost shocking how quickly a cutthroat came up for the ant. And by quickly, I don’t mean it rose fast. Far from it. That fish took on my fourth cast in the pool, but rose and ate at an incredibly sluggish pace. The next couple fish did the same thing. But as the day progressed the sun worked its magic and the temperature climbed more and more. A funny thing happened… the fish didn’t seem to get any more willing to eat the Chernobyl as my catch rate remained the same, but they did take it with more gusto the warmer it got. It was fascinating. Towards the end of the outing the fish were flying off the bottom for the fly. The contrast with those sluggish rises early on was extraordinary. Then a BWO hatch started and the fish changed their behavior entirely, but that’s a different story.

Flash forward to a mild January day in the first week of 2021. I was on a small meandering Connecticut brook trout stream. The water was cold, not even 40 degrees fahrenheit, and yet I had an Ausable Bomber tied on. I fully expected to bring up numerous wild brook trout, but I was not likely to see the sort of manic slashing takes I could expect in spring and early summer. Though this was a big bushy fly and the fish would certainly come up for it, I knew they’d be doing so very slowly. And that’s exactly what happened. I rose more than a dozen brookies, and they all came up slowly and gulped the fly very daintily. 

Nothing about this is biologically surprising here. Fish are cold blooded, so they slow down when the water is cold. Even when a fish is going to rise for a big bushy dry fly anyway, if the water is below 40 degrees you have to assume that it is going to do so as if that fly were a tiny midge lazily floating down a flat pool. Oftentimes that is what the fish actually are doing -rising to midges. That’s the most common January hatch on Connecticut brook trout streams. That doesn’t mean if you threw a fistful of mayflies in the stream none would get eaten. Brook trout- and cutthroat in a mountain stream for that matter- are opportunists. They live in very sterile waters. They need to eat every bit of food they can get their mouth around because there just isn’t much of it around. That’s why these brookies will rise to a size 14 Ausable Bomber when the largest live insect they’ve seen in a month was probably too small to truly imitate on a size 18 hook.

Rise forms often dictate how we trout fish. Fly selection, presentation, hook set timing, and more can all be deciphered by how the fish are rising. Fly selection and presentation can also sometimes dictate the rise form if fish are actually willing to eat your offering. A skated fly amongst fish sipping emergers might get smashed by a more aggressive trout. But in the winter the rise will almost always be slow, even if you’re fishing a big ass chernobyl ant or skating a bomber, so don’t let seeing only subtle dimples for natural bugs dissuade you from swinging a big dry through a riffle every now and then.

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

The Annual Perch Mega-School

 Every year in my home lake, hundreds if not thousands of perch congregate in the only two major feeder streams- right inside the mouths. Both white perch and yellow perch are represented, though this behavior seems to have a few different causes. First and foremost is the urge for fish to seek warmer and more oxygen rich water in the winter, especially in an oxygen deficient lake like this one. Secondly, this appears to be some sort of pre-spawn behavior. A lot of the male white perch I’ve caught during this schooling behavior expel milt. What it certainly isn’t is a feeding behavior; in fact most of the fish in the school largely ignore anything offered to them. Though the percentage of willing eaters is typically low, there are so many fish it doesn’t matter. It isn’t hard some days to catch more than 100 perch.

Massive perch schools aren’t uncommon in the Northeast in the winter, nor is catching loads of them in a short outing. But what makes this mega-school so unusual is its presence in an enclosed, shallow creek. You can see the perch schooled -sometimes certainly numbered in the thousands. The fish are packed as tightly as any menhaden school I’ve ever seen. Though certainly not natural, as the body of water isn’t natural and the white perch weren’t in the system even before it was dammed, it is pretty wild to observe.

It has also resulted in some interesting animal observations. I’ve seen mink taking advantage of the easy meal on a number of occasions. More unusually, Noah, his dad, and now I have seen mallard ducks eating, with some difficulty, smaller, live perch that they somehow manage to catch out of the school. Though mallards seem fairly benign and unlikely to predate animals any larger than aquatic insects, they’ve actually been documented hunting, killing, and eating small birds. This is something I’d never have known had observing mallards eating live perch not piqued my curiosity. This is one of the reasons I love fishing so much. Done with a curious eye, it is a path to many unusual and surprising truths. 

Another unusual phenomenon spurred on by these dense schools is mid-winter topwater bites. The perch schools are so densely packed that many of the fish are pushed to the surface. With just inches from the fish’s eyes to the surface of the water, they can’t help but notice a twitched dry fly. I catch some of these fish every year on dry flies. It makes for a fun little anomalous winter bite. 

Noah and I spent a lot of time over the years watching these winter perch mega-schools. Most other winter fish gatherings happen on a scale too big for easy observation. Having this small water situation right by our houses was like Noah and I being able to experiment with winter fish behavior in a lab. It’s been a very cool experience.

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, C, Franky, and Geof for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien