Slamming Tiger Trout

 CT has been stocking tiger trout again. Though the practice isn't something I'm much of a fan of, as is generally the case with stocking any non-native, domesticated fish, they are admittedly more fun and interesting than the run of the mill domestic rainbows and horridly deformed or dully colored browns that predominate CT's hatchery production. They also behave differently than those other fish, and act almost a as a cohesive unit. If a bunch of tiger trout are dumped in one river, they tend to end up pretty far away from wherever they were put but still pretty close to each-other and often in predictable places. This is something that has taken me a longer time to figure out than it probably should have. But now... oh boy. 

Tigers, regardless of their origin, are excessively aggressive in my experience. Wild ones are and stocked ones certainly are. I'll never forget having a tiger hit a mouse 12 times in about 8 minutes, getting hooked twice- and even staying hooked and fighting briefly once  -but eating again and again until I actually landed it. I then caught the same fish again on the same mouse a few days later. This is a notable example of the biological phenomena known as hybrid vigor. 

Over the last couple months I had great success specifically targeting tigers using big streamers, both spey casting in large, sweeping runs and stripping flies in pocket water and smaller pools. There was no best fly, nor a best way to fish the fly other than low and somewhat slow because the water was fairly cold.

 Tigers being tiger, many of these fish were caught after they'd already been missed or hooked. One day Noah was with me, and while we were fishing right next to each other a tiger hit and missed my fly, ate Noah's jig but came off, and then smashed my fly again and got hooked. That one went about 19" and was the longest I'd caught there. 

It's funny. We aren't catching much else at all here, and this spot is solidly miles from wherever these tiger were originally stocked. Tiger never make up the majority of the stocking either. What that tells me is the tigers aren't just doing what all the rest of the stocked trout are doing, or I'd be catching rainbows in the same spot. These buggers are have got their own agenda entirely. That's not necessarily a good thing for a stocked predatory fish to do ecologically, but it does make fishing for them engaging. I'll gladly book trips for these crazy things if anyone is interested. I've got one tomorrow actually, hopefully the fish take advantage of the brief warm-up.

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, Geof, Luke, Streamer Swinger, and Noah 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.