A Few Screws Loose

 The idea that trout don't live in ugly places is bull. Well, I guess we can find beauty in a lot of places, but the crusty railroad bridge abutment I sat on watching water slide by beneath, tucked within a couple hundred yards between roads lined with industry and shabby houses isn't most people's view of pretty. Nor mine, really. But there is an aesthetic of sorts to decay. When my neurodivergence wandered down the path of model railroading, I took joy in rust and grime and making things look old. I used chalk dust, sometimes dry sometimes not, to make streaks on iron oar cars. I tried to get walls and stonework to look worn, because that was natural. Paint chips, railroad ties crack, and metal rusts. At ten years old I was plenty conscious of that. I looked up to model makers who created urban landscapes that looked right more so than I did those who focused on dramatic natural landscapes. Perhaps that carried over with time, because though I have little interest in building a model railroad through a crumbling urban ecosystem of my own creation, there's still draw to fish a trout stream through the real thing. 

Not long ago I heard a switch-up of the old trout and beautiful places quote, this one was "trout don't live in ugly places, but they're stocked in them". This doesn't hold up either, because the very reason I sat on that bridge abutment was because this urban, grungy stream held trout that were born there. Some quite nice ones in fact. On a different day not far from where I sat I stood on the bank while my friend Grant blew a shot at a very good wild trout indeed, one we both saw enough of to make us wince when that line went slack. Of course, these were brown trout, and their ancestors had indeed been stocked. But they are wild trout none-the-less, and just one example of many in such a setting. Trout hunting has taken me past homeless encampments, under factories, and around more than a few discarded needles. In southern New England it would even seem that some of the prettier, wilder streams have all but lost their ability to produce good wild fish while some urban streams continue to kick out quality fish. It's a tenuous existence, of course. I've watched two of my favorite urban wild trout streams collapse over the last five years. These fish are riding a razor's edge. 

Just a few feet below me was clear water and rock, but also a heaping pile of nails, screws, and other discarded metal. I see a lot of things dumped from urban bridges and this was no surprise. It was quite a volume though. It would be interesting to know what becomes of this and other human metallic waste. In some places our species is creating artificial mineral deposits, some exceptionally concentrated. The current river courses of many Great Lakes tributaries could probably be mined for lead in the distant future. And this pile of rusting nails, if it doesn't just rot away first, could conceivably become some sort of iron deposit in a conglomerate rock layer of this river's substrate. 

Long before that ever happens, though, I hoped to catch some sort of stream born non-native salmonid. Ideally a robust one with orange on its belly and sharp black spots on it's flanks. A beautiful in wild thing that shouldn't be there, in a landscape of our own creation, a river marred unrecognizable from it's former glory. Sometimes, we don't even know what we had after it's gone. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Courtney, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, and Javier 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.

Thinking About Baitfish and Trout

 I've noticed a general lack of baitfish knowledge among fly anglers in southern New England, and I think it stems from a lack of interest in small fish themselves. This isn't true of everyone, obviously, there are some guys that have a very extensive knowledge of baitfish and how to imitate them. However, rather than being interested in the fish communities present in the trout streams they fish, a lot of fly casters seem to focus on the fish species trout are known to eat. Perhaps the best example is sculpins. Trout love sculpins, right? 

Slimy sculpin

Sculpins are rare in Connecticut. We only have two freshwater sculpin species, native slimy sculpins which are present in a mere handful of notable trout streams, and invasive knobfin sculpin which as of this date are only found in one watershed. Yet I see people fishing large sculpin imitations all over rivers that just flat out don't have sculpins, to trout that have never seen a sculpin or anything like a sculpin. Of course fish are not that smart, so you can still catch a trout on a sculpin even if it has never seen one, but it takes a lot less time for fish to stop reacting positively to a streamer if they see a lot of it but never see the real fish it imitates. 

Moreover, a lot of the flies being used to imitate sculpins are way, way bigger than the vast majority of sculpins found in the water they are being fished. Three inches is a gigantic, rare slimy sculpin in CT. I have never seen one. I only know of one place that routinely produces 2 inchers. Everywhere else they pretty much max out at just a bit over and inch... very small. Think about that when you are pawing through your streamer box. The best sculpin pattern in there probably isn't even a sculpin pattern. A good sculpin pattern for CT, one that actually imitates the fish itself, is going to be tan or light olive, a little bit mottled, slimmer than most commercially available sculpin patterns, and a bit less than 2 inches long. Flies that I like are Domenick Swentosky's Bunny Bullet and Rich Garfield's Sirloin. 

Bluntnose minnow

Notropis sp.

Other than sculpins trout anglers seem to flounder around trying to identify common trout forage. The years of hearing fisherman call fallfish, juvenile suckers, and common shiners "chubs" have made this incredibly clear to me. I believe being able to identify fish is one of the most important skills an angler can have, yet most anglers are shockingly bad at identifying fish. I have my own struggles, but I at least put in an effort. The photo above this paragraph says "Notropis sp." because that's as narrowly as I could identify that fish with the photos I took of it. Notropis are a notoriously difficult genus to identify, and that fish was caught in an area with a few different species. In CT though we have only one species, spottail shiner, and trout do eat them. It is very helpful to know what they are, where they live, and what they look like for some trout fisheries around here.  I consider them a baitfish of notable importance to trout fisherman. In Southern New England there are really not too many species of small stream dwelling fish, so it doesn't take much to learn about each one. 

The species that are of particular importance to trout anglers are the aforementioned slimy sculpin and spottail shiner, as well as tessellated darter, creek chub, fallfish, bluntnose minnow, cutlips minnow, common shiner, white sucker, blacknose dace, longnose dace, alewife, banded killifish, and brook trout. Knowing the range extent, behavior, habitat preference, and what flies imitate these fish will put you a step above the rest. The range and habitat will dictate where you fish their imitations, the behavior will dictate the action and weight of the fly and how your present it. Species like tessellated darter hug the bottom and move along as their name suggests, by darting about with pauses in between. Alewives swim continuously suspended off the bottom in schools and are found in some large lakes or in rivers with access to saltwater. 

This beautiful winter wild brown took a streamer in a crystal clear, mirror surface run on a bluebird day. If you match the forage, it becomes easier to fool difficult trout in less than ideal streamer conditions.

Unfortunately, streamer fishing seems to draw some amount of thoughtlessness. Perhaps that's because it appeals to a more restless sort of angler than other methodologies; the sort of angler that would rather flog the water all day with a massive fly than sit and look at a piece of water for a while and think about the best approach. There's also a contingency of anglers that throw on a streamer as an after thought. The trout aren't rising, nymphing is slow, I'll just throw on a big woolly bugger. That's no more likely to be successful than the previous example.

There are a lot of very good streamer anglers out there too, pushing the limits of both action and imitation. What inspired me to write this post was a cumulative effect of conversations with other anglers and reading some other writings. This certainly isn't all original thought, though I've tried to add my own twist to it. I can give a huge amount of credit to Joe Goodspeed, Domenick Swentosky, Blane Chocklett and others for making me think about this stuff at all. When I started streamer fishing I was chucking Headbanger sculpins and Zoo Cougars in rivers that, well, don't have any sculpins... and Double Decievers in rivers that don't have any broad-bodied baitfish. When I think about it now I realize just how silly that was. It isn't at all surprising that it rarely produced any notable fish. Over time I started to pay attention to the action of my flies, and that was an important step. It wasn't until more recently that I actually started matching my flies to the forage present in each stream I fish, even though I've been mircofishing and studying small freshwater fishes for quite a few years now and knew full well what was present. 

If you ever want help identifying baitfish, always feel free to send pictures and ask. I'll also be setting up an online class either late in the month of February or in early March about common Connecticut trout stream baitfish. I also happily run on long tangents about this sort of thing in the field with clients, so if you want to learn more book a trip and I can really show it to you in practice. There are also tons of other great resources and guides if you don't live in Connecticut or Rhode Island, all it takes is a little bit of digging. 

 

Big Unfriendly Trout

 Back around the holidays, I was able to make a bit of time to get out on the water with my good friend Joe. Boots and I hadn't gotten on the water together since July so it had been a long time coming. It was to be a simple morning fishing local trout water in relatively mild though damp winter weather, both an enjoyable setup and the sort that has the fish a bit active. The water was a bit low for the time of year and the fish were spread out a bit, meaning we'd have a slow pick rather than finding fish piled up in typical wintering holes and laying the hammer on them. 

Most of the fish were typically sized stockie rainbows, but I was aware that there were some large browns in one of the short stretches we fished. I saw one, actually, just a short time after we arrived. Then a bit later I found two more milling around with each other. We both took shots at the fish, and I was shocked neither ate one of Joe's worms. Eventually I laid a drift past the smaller of the two with a Walt's Worm under an indicator and saw the tell-tale white mouth flash. I set the hook and the fish angrily dropped out of its lie shaking its head. The other one decided to follow. For much of the fight, the two fish were almost glued to each other. I tried to get Joe to cast at the follower but he insisted I land my fish first. I really hoped he'd hook one of these big yellow monstrosities as well, but I also respected that he didn't want to mess up the chances of me landing mine. There's a lot to be said of a fishing buddy that will forgo a shot to make sure you land the fish you've got on. 

This big broodstock Cortland strain brown was vibrant but very domestic looking- shaped like the schedule fed animal it was. Both Cortlands and Romes, which were originally produced in hatcheries in NY then brought to CT, often have the almost marbled pattern that this male did, and I regularly see them mistaken for tiger trout which they most certainly are not. Male seeforellens produced in CT hatcheries regularly have this patterning too, though less extreme. Frankly the domestication seems to be to some extent accentuating this trait, as I've seen it in wild trout but never even close to this extreme. I could imagine some koi-like genetic art being done with brown trout. That might be pretty cool, though I'd rather not catch them in rivers and lakes that have wild native fish. 

We tried for awhile to find and tempt the other Cortlands, and I had two follows with a streamer by another one, but it wasn't to be. We spent the rest of out time talking about life and fishing and landing the odd rainbow here and there. It was an enjoyable, relaxed, pressure free morning on the water, something I always need to balance out the intensely focused trips.

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.

Monster Rogue Brown Trout

 Trout wander. Some go upstream, some down. Some wander down a tributary, up the river it flows into, then into another tributary. This is how fish spread and proliferate, it's a necessary function of their evolution and survival. Sometimes this results in trout, be they stocked or wild, finding their way into water that isn't looked at by most fly anglers as trout water. I'm talking about the trout that go way down, as far as they can. Some go to big, slow, lower river channels, some end up in lakes or ponds, and some end up in estuarine waters and become sea run trout. These trout often get big on a greater abundance of bait fish, or they already are big and that's how they survive- usually the sort of places these fish end up have larger predators that happily chow down on small trout. Encountering these fish takes a lot of skill and even more luck if you intentionally try to catch one. Most of the time though these trout get caught by people casting lures for bass, stripers, walleye, and other species that are well known to inhabit the water they're fishing. 

I still remember my first encounter with a rogue trout. It was a wild brook trout caught out of my home lake, a place nobody would ever rightly expect to catch such a fish. I did not catch it, my friend Dalton did... on a wacky rigged senko of all things. The fish was near the mouth of the tributary it had undoubtedly come out of, feeding on corn that had been thrown into the lake to attract carp. It remains the most impressive wild brook trout I've personally seen caught in CT. 

My own history with actually catching these rogue trout in Connecticut, be they sea run, lake runs, or what I call "river runs" that drop from tributaries into large slow rivers, is filled mostly with disappointment. I've caught only one definitive sea run brown trout, a small but stunning wild fish that I landed back in 2014. River run and lake run fish have been just as scarce for me, though I've had my encounters. Then, just a couple weeks ago, Lady Luck smiled and I happened into a monster. 

I'd been putting a fair bit more effort into trout in general but particularly big, rogue trout this fall and early winter. With a summer of exceptional rainfall allowing- and in some cases forcing- trout to move around, I figured there'd be a better chance of running into big ones in what some might consider unlikely places. After a bunch of trips without the sort of success I was really hoping for, I set out one morning under cloudy skies and cold conditions to cover a piece of water that could hold some large trout. I fished thoroughly, starting at the uppermost point I thought I might encounter a trout and working down towards the mouth of the river. Not everywhere was reachable or fishable, some of it was too deep and swift and chunks of the bank were private or just too treacherous, but I felt I would be able to cover enough. 

The fish came at the tailout of a large pool, in slick gliding water like I'd expect an Atlantic salmon to roll in. In fact, the fish rolled my fly, a big white Drunk & Disorderly, very much like a salmon. The squared off tail that began slapping the water, though, said monster brown trout. That's exactly what it was, a huge rogue brown trout. The fish gave a pretty good fight on my 6wt, running a bit, thrashing on the surface, and dogging deep. Soon she was in the shallows and I had her. The still-worn fins signified that the fish was of hatchery origin, but proportionally she was shaped like she'd been around a while. She was miles from anywhere such trout are stocked, and had the wounds to show that she'd been around the block. Scars on one side of here head were clearly left when an angler removed the trebles of a large striper plug. This is a brown trout that has been cruising around striped bass and maybe even bluefish haunts. 

At the time, since I knew it wasn't a wild fish, I wasn't as excited as I probably could have been. It was an exceptional and in many ways unlikely fish. Considering how long I've known that catching these rogue fish was possible, I'm really glad it came to fruition. Now I just want to do it better. I want more, I want bigger, and I want wild. 

I'm obsessed. I probably need help. I'm in the salmonid mood again and I'm hell-bent on catching the biggest trout I've ever seen.

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.

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Giant Brown Trout in the Dark

 It was never going to be a warm night, but if the temperatures don't dip into the teens and the other conditions are tolerable, I take what nights I can get between the end of November and the end of March. Trout eat at night all year, especially really large wild trout, so when an angler wants to catch the largest wild brown trout they can, taking winter nights off isn't a good idea. But perhaps neither is the original intent if you value your sanity. Cold, dark, long winter nights rarely produce the excitement that summer and fall can give. Hookups are few and far between and rarely is there not at least one body part- usually more -that's in pain. The air hurts you in the winter. 

Garth had texted me asking if I'd like to night fish the Farmington with him earlier that day, and I said yes but with a caveat. We wouldn't fish the Farmington, I had better ideas. I wouldn't tell him the names of the streams though. He rolled into my driveway a bit after 9:00 asking if we were going to this river or that river... none were correct answers. Eventually I had to tell him where we were going, but all I said was "head like you're going to that one burger joint." That was enough of an answer for him. "No!" he replied. "There? No!"

He'd fished the same spot, I knew that. But never for trout, and I was sure he didn't think there'd be wild brown trout there let alone giant ones. Most people wouldn't think there could be large wild trout at this spot, and I'm okay with that. This was exactly the sort of place I target when looking for monster nocturnal browns. 

We covered one run for a little while without anything to show for it but ice crystals in our guides. I kept thinking about the next run downstream, which was essentially the head of one excessively long glide. I knew from a recent daylight visit that there were lots of fallfish down there, on the order of hundreds, and up to 14 inches. There were also lots of spot tail shiners and juvenile white suckers. This was exactly the sort of place a large brown trout would visit under the cover of darkness. It was much too shallow and visible for such a fish to spend any time there in daylight, but without the sun shining down on this run, a big predatory fish could do its dirty deeds without eagles, herons, or people seeing it. Perhaps there would be one exception tonight. Maybe Garth and I would get to see one of these fish. 

We made our way down and slowly worked the run. I was fishing a large, black articulated streamer, about the size of many of the smaller fallfish and suckers. I swung the fly through every possible feeding lane, working it slowly, only manipulating it very slightly with small twitches. I got about as far down the run as I'd reasonably expect a trout to be when one decided to interrupt my routine. The take was subtle, just a faint tick. I lifted the rod decisively but not too sharply, and felt an initial jerky head-shake. I stripped down to bury the hook if it wasn't already and that told the fish something was really up. It began making sweeping head-shakes, yet not breaking the surface, and made a decisive turn to head downstream. This told me just how large this trout must be. It had control here, I couldn't have easily turned it. I didn't feel I needed to though, and instead opted to follow. Garth heard this commotion but wasn't yet sure exactly what was going on. 

Suddenly movement ceased, and there were a couple faint sensations of tension changing. Nothing felt good. I pulled and nothing pulled back. The fly was stuck on something and that was no longer the fish. I could tell that it was a branch, probably quite a small one as there was a bit of flex. As only a handful of fish had managed before, this beast had perfectly transferred my fly to a branch. I can picture a lot of the fish that have done this to me before because I've seen most of them. But this one I don't know. I could let my imagination run wild. It could be a giant silvery hen, with black spots like bits of pepper. Or perhaps a lean, heavily kyped buck with giant red spots and an orange belly. But I don't know, and I never will. All I know is that it was huge. Garth and I discussed the situation and decided to continue with our night as if that could happen again. Maybe it could have, but it didn't. We crept around in the glow of street lights and businesses trying not to cast shadows over deep pools and log jams. The sense I got was that monsters lurked here. Perhaps I'll encounter one some other night. Maybe I'll even get to hold it for a moment. 

Happy Holidays everybody. Stay safe, healthy, and warm. Fish when you can. Be good to the people around you. 

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.

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Freestone Wild Brown Trout Redemption Day

 It had been a good long while since I last poked around some new freestones to look for wild trout. A preoccupation with bigger fish had held my attention for a while, but it was inevitable that I'd need to get back out on some boulder strewn creeks to make sure I could, in fact, still catch trout. Sometimes it feels like I've lost a lot of my muscle memory when it comes to trout fishing. I certainly do it far less than I used to. Of course it doesn't help at all that a lot of the small streams I used to fish are a mere shadow of what they used to be like, with far fewer and much smaller fish on average. CT wild trout has seemed to be in the downswing over the last 5 years especially, with some historically productive wild brown trout streams that produced very large fish being almost wiped out. I watched the collapse of my favorite brown trout river, and my home water as well. Fewer fish certainly makes it feel like I've gotten worse at fishing. Thankfully when I actually do fish areas that remain strongholds, I'm reminded that I've still got the touch. 

Such was the case where I went one day last week. I dropped Cheyenne off at work and headed to a stream I'd fished before but to a stretch I'd not been on. The flow was moderate, the water lightly stained. The stream was structurally very similar to my home water. It was a classic New England freestone. The gradient was steep and the substrate was mostly boulders with some cobble and gravel. 

I knew wild brown and brook trout were present here though I wasn't sure of their abundance. I was very quickly catching fish though... so evidently they were pretty numerous. They were mostly small wild browns with some stocked fish mixed in. There was a fish everywhere there should have been one, too. If I dropped my Ausable Ugly into a prime lie, it got eaten. 

I took a mental note of where I got takes, looking back upstream (I was working down) as I went and memorizing each spot I'd missed or hooked a trout. This is something I do a lot, I think its every bit as important as knowing how to present flies well, matching forage, or knowing when the conditions are best. Remembering where you hooked fish allows an angler to draw comparisons: trout don't act any differently anywhere in the world, really. If you see a the same sort of holding or feeding lie you've caught a trout out of before and the conditions and time of year are similar, there will probably be a trout there, whether you're fishing in Argentina, Montana, or Massachusetts. 

Such was the case with this stream. Though I'd never stepped foot there before I wasn't fishing unfamiliar water. I fished pockets, runs, troughs, and plunges I knew and had fished before. I'd seen that back eddy before, and caught that brown trout next to the log- they weren't the same, but they kind of were. Do you know what I mean? 

I picked pockets with a big grin on my face, happy to feel very much at home. Everything was familiar, simple, and wonderful. The fish were gorgeous and the habitat was perfect. I was pulling on trout with regularity and tallying them in my head. By the time I left, I'd caught 38 fish. One was a fallfish, two were substantial holdovers, and the rest were a mix of wild fish and fish stocked as fingerling.

I wasn't done fishing that day, but I'll save that for another post. For now, I'll leave you with a suggestion: fish thoughtfully and thoroughly. Sometimes I find myself rushing along, especially on new water, sure that there must be better water somewhere ahead. Don't assume that. Work what's in front of you first. Analyze it, fish it in a way the has produced fish for you before in a similar spot. then, if that doesn't work, do something new to you. 

I've been very much enjoying the videos put out by Jensen Fly Fishing. They are perhaps the best proponent out there right now of methodical, well thought-out approaches to trout fishing. Watching their videos has made me rethink why I've been successful in the past and what I need to do in the future. There's always more to learn. 

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.

Late Fall and Winter Trout Season

 We're progressing into a colder weather pattern here in New England and the fishing is changing. Dropping water temperatures and higher average stream flows mean generally slower fish behavior. That doesn't mean slower fishing though. It actually took me a fair bit of time to really dial in the late season trout bite on my local waters. Part of what it took to dial that bite in was just incessant bobber fishing and small but stupid heavy streamers. Since that isn't a fishing style I liked for a long time, I ended up missing out on a large amount of the season. Once I did pick it up though, I covered copious amounts of water to figure out where the wintering holes were, and when I did find them I found loads of trout stacked up. 

 

I then of course wanted to answer a question: could I catch these trout at night? It turns out the answer was yes. Even in the dead of winter, with fine tuned strategies and slow ad methodical approach, I was still able to pull on fish after dark.

If you are looking to improve your success during the late season, or learn new water and techniques, I'll be booking trout trips throughout the winter. Both daylight and nighttime trips will be available- hand warmers included on all trips, haha! 

A big thank you goes out to those of you that booked me already this year, you've all been fantastic and I greatly appreciate your business. I hope I'll get to see some of you folks again! 

In the meantime, I'm considering starting a series of zoom classes on fly fishing strategies, fly design, and reading water. If that sounds interesting to any of you, please comment to let me know. 

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.

Varied Tactics for Catching Trout at Night

My distaste for the social media trend of "mousing" is not a secret. Of course, I haven't exactly prevented the perpetuation of that trend with this blog or my writing elsewhere. I enjoy catching trout on big dry flies that imitate rodents and amphibians. But what I enjoy more is understanding trout behavior, and only slinging rodents at night doesn't give much of a picture of nocturnal trout behavior. It isn't the best way to get the most or the largest trout at night either. If an angler wants to get the whole picture, sure, they should fish mice. But they should also tight line, swing wets, drift and strip streamers, fish dry flies by audio, and creep pushers along gravel shelves. I consider myself skilled at each method and I apply each one conditionally, and sometimes use three or four different tactics in a single night. Flexibility is important. 

On a recent night outing I utilized mice, streamers, and wet flies and caught fish on each. It was classic conditions for a night bite. The water was low but not too low, and warm but not too warm. There'd likely been a hatch or spinner fall at dusk. American toads were calling from the slack areas and mice had been crossing the road on my way to the river. Unfortunately I'd be fishing water that lacks wild trout in targetable numbers, but I wanted to stay practiced. 

I started out with a Master Splinter to see if the fish would be in a mouse mood at all. Some nights, and often some years, they aren't remotely as interested. Other years they go wild any time good conditions present themselves. This seems to be a good year. Fish came to the mouse shockingly frequently, as stocked trout do some nights. Its rarely if ever like that with wild fish. 

The oldest, and quite possibly most effective method for catching nocturnal trout on the fly is swinging wet flies. Methodologies don't differ that much from the same fishing style done in daylight, though the flies are typically bigger. On this night, winging a wet fly produced the largest fish. 

The streamer went on last, a black Marabou Muddler. That took its share of fish as well. Often, that is the most effective large fish method at night. What is the takeaway here? Be well versed. Don't follow the crowd, it will just come at your own expense. Mousing is fun and it does work sometimes, but it isn't everything. 

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, 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. 

Seeking a Monster Fallfish

 I'm totally infatuated with giant fallfish. I'd love to say that I have a few water bodies close to home where I can consistently catch fallfish north of a foot long, but this just doesn't happen around here. There are some fish of that caliber, but not many. This is in contrast to other parts of the Northeast where fallfish in excess of a foot really aren't that uncommon. For me, looking for an impressive fallfish is a needle-in-a-haystack type pursuit. 

last week I devoted quite a bit of time to a stream I've caught some of my biggest local fallfish in. It isn't a large stream but during the spawning season, big fallfish enter it from the river it flows into. The spawn was in full swing when I visited, and it was difficult to pick fish out of the schools. When I caught males, they were colored up and their heads were covered in tubercles. When I caught females, they were full of eggs. 

I worked both up and downriver hoping to find some dense schools with a few large ones mixed in, but the pickings were slim. I ended up covering more water than I intended, and catching a few unintended species. Stocked brown and rainbow trout were a disappointing find, and I got about a dozen of them. 

At the very uppermost point that most fish migrating from downriver can reach, there was a really deep hole. Salmonid species and perhaps white suckers could perhaps pass the plunges about the pool, but most fish are stopped. Every year I get a few small smallmouth and largemouth bass in that pool, but on this trip my indicator was sunk by a smallmouth that was every bit of 4 1/2 pounds! Unfortunately, the hook pulled. That certainly would have been the fish of the day. As I walked back downriver, the sun came out and it started and I went to look for rattlesnakes. The cloud cover rolled right back over and it cooled off again. I saw timbers, but had no good photo opportunities. It was just one of those days where nothing was going quite right. Hopefully I'll be able to get on some monster fallfish at a later date.

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, 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. 

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

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

Seeking a Truttasaurus

 Salmo trutta is the most iconic fish in fly fishing, without question. Without brown trout, fly fishing would likely be very different. They are so highly regarded that when Eurpopeans began colonizing other lands they felt the need to have brown trout exported to those places. Tasmania, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States, Chile… brown trout were spread far and wide. The repercussions of this are huge and diverse and we are still seeing them to this day. They will never go away… both the fish, and their impacts. These impacts are cultural and ecological and even economic.

Brown trout have pushed native galaxiidae to the brink of extinction in parts of Australia and New Zealand, crowded out sea-run brook trout on Long Island and Cape Cod, and threatened to snuff out populations of native golden trout in California’s Kern River basin. They’ve created whole economies in the Catskills, the Ozarks, and the Rockies. They’ve had no small roll in what fly fishing culture is today. Brown trout were a remarkable and important fish within their native range that humans turned into a full blown religion and spread across the globe. It’s easy to understand why; they are fun and challenging to fish for. I do wish we had the foresight to know what damage these fish would do; we still aren’t careful enough. Brown trout are here and they’ve made themselves quite at home -even in small, dirty, stinky, urban CT rivers. 

Truttasauruses -huge wild brown trout approaching or exceeding two feet in length- exist in a number of Northeastern rivers. Some are famous, like the Farmington. Some are known but not quite as widely publicized, like the Deerfield. Others are still quiet, thankfully. They may get fished, some quite a bit, but they aren’t widely recognized for their large, wild brown trout. Those are the places I really enjoy seeking a truttasaurus. This past fall and this winter, I’ve been exploring a new river with big brown potential. Actually, I’d fished it before, but not thoroughly or recently. I knew it had some large wild brown trout so I decided it may be time to really learn it. So far all the action occurred in one day. I caught stocked trout every other trip and saw wild browns on the first excursion, but the day after a rain showed me the real potential in this stream.

The first run I fished quickly produced a wild brown not at all big enough to be called truttasaurus. But she was a fat, healthy, and extremely colorful specimen and boosted my confidence. The fly she ate was my simple olive Polar Bugger, a mid-sized single hook trout streamer that has become a go-to in recent years. In fact, my streamer selection has been simplified very drastically since my initial big-streamers-for-trout obsession started. My boat boxes are now filled with mostly simpler, smaller patterns, all proven to catch fish consistently.  

I continued downstream, picking off smaller wild browns and ugly stocker rainbows, but I wasn’t moving the sort of fish I wanted to. Then, in a rather nondescript shallow run, I watched a high teens brown sneak out of a sheltered bucket and take a swing at the fly. It never made contact but wouldn’t come back, even after a 5 minute rest, but my confidence was bolstered again and I continued fishing with hopes of a bigger fish. Half a river mile and four more stocked bows later, I sent a cast up a snag filled bend, across a good looking slick, and out came the true Truttasaurus. He showed himself four feet behind the fly, rising through from the gloom. He charged the fly like I’ve never seen before, tail kicking hard. He nailed it, and I strip set hard. I found no purchase, I wasn’t even in contact with the fly the fish had pushed it so far towards me. I saw it shake its head and I tried to strip again but he’d already dropped my streamer. I watched his orange and yellow body disappear, completely dejected. It’s not often we encounter brown trout in the range of 24” in the northeast, and any time one comes and goes without being hooked is a painful experience. 

I hustled further downriver, found the quality of the water to be deteriorating in its fishiness, changed streamers to a big yellow and orange Heifer Groomer, and turned back upstream. In the same run where the monster was living, I got a much much smaller but stunningly colored male. It ate the unweighted fly on the surface just after splashdown, one of the most visually spectacular types of streamer eats. I got a few more young browns before deciding to head out, but the truttasaurus window was closed.

Brown trout are a resilient, diverse, and extraordinary species. The obsession with them by fly fishermen and fishermen in general is not unwarranted. It is remarkable and unfortunate how well traveled they have become. Though brown trout are here to stay and indeed a great sport fish, it is paramount that we don’t spread them further. In some special cases, we may even need to consider eliminating them. The few remaining wild brook trout streams on Cape Cod owe their rejuvenation to those that had the foresight to remove the brown trout and allow the native species to reclaim their territory. At the same time, there is no reason states shouldn’t be doing their best to protect coldwater fisheries that happen to hold wild brown trout. 

Conservation in the modern era is complex, and few fish exemplify that more than brown trout. 

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