Late Season River Multi-species Fishing

 As water temperatures plummet in November, fish are both on the move and slowing down. They are on the move because the need to be in very different water for the winter than they were just in all summer, and slowing down because as cold blooded animals their metabolism slows when it gets cold. This results in some interesting challenges for an angler trying to catch these fish. It can also create some great fishing, because the fish's feeding drive may be just a bit slower but they often pile up in staging areas and then in their wintering holes. 

The fish species I'm really talking about here are fallfish, bass, sunfish, and perch. The late fall and early spring transitional period are, quite honestly, some of the best time windows I've found for loading up large numbers of these fish and often some trophy sized specimens. This year I was presented with the challenge of finding these fish in staging areas on new water, the same general area I've fished all summer in Rhode Island for carp. Because I'd been so focused on carp, I let a lot slide and missed chances to better figure out bites with some other species. Come November, catching would be more difficult simply because fish would be in fewer places and actively feeding less often. 

I knew the sorts of spots that should be holding fish though from past experience on other watersheds. I used google maps and pinned every spot that looked like it had potential, from in-flowing creeks and canals to backwaters and large eddies. Some would clearly be difficult to access, so I started out with the one closest to home that I knew would be publicly accessible. I fished it first in low pressure during a big storm, with a simple "float n' fly" tactic. My leader was 8 feet long, tapered to 0x, with a small Thingamabobber and a micro streamer. Often, when water temperatures are falling, any retrieve is too much retrieve. Think effective ice fishing tactics: you want a fly to be basically in place, maybe with a little bit of jigging action, but barely moving horizontally at all. 

I hit it right with the first spot, which was excellent. It wasn't crazy. The fish were neither huge nor especially numerous, but they were there and I could catch them; that's half the battle. 

Over the next week or two I poked around new spots and revisited the first with mixed results. For a while, that first place seemed incredibly consistent until in one 24 window it went from fantastic, with a three perch and ten bluegill outing being followed the very next afternoon by a complete skunking. All that changed in that time frame was a three inch river drop and a 2 degree temperature drop. That's often all it takes for fish to move on from a staging area to a wintering hole.

Some of the other spots that produced fish were more typical fallfish or sucker late fall holes, though I squeaked the odd yellow perch out of them too. That was cool, as I'm not especially used to catching yellow perch out of anything other than near-still or still water this late in the year. Pulling them up on an indicator rig from the sort of water that would be holding brown trout in a cold-water fishery was actually pretty cool. There were fallfish in all the right spots too. No monsters, but lovely specimens with typical late fall coloration. 

Inevitably these spots started to falter to as the temperature dropped even further. I've now shifted focus to other fisheries anyway, but when I get back to this river I'll need to learn another set of conditions entirely. It'll continue to be an interesting challenge. 

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.

A Brief Jaunt Through The Catskills

 While driving back home from Maryland, I found myself quite sick of being in the car any longer. I was not far from the New York border in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and a certain Catskills trout stream was only a short distance out of my way. It was still early in the day, so I went. I was sure I wouldn't be that close to it anytime soon and it was a stream I'd wanted to fish for a while. Take opportunities when they come. 

This stream is one known for big wild browns and some exceptional brook trout as well. It is also a bit less trafficked and harder to get to. Automatically it had a pretty big appeal. I like wild fish, I LOVE native fish, and I adore water with less fishing pressure. So I found myself winding down back roads that eventually turned to dirt before I found myself at the access point. Then I had to hike in a bit, but in no time I was standing in a very pretty river. 

The sun was harsh, the water unfamiliar. I sensed I was in with a bit of a challenge, and that did turn out to be the case.  The fish were distributed unevenly throughout the mile and a half I covered, and though I didn't find it surprising where I did find fish, quite a bit of water seemed barren without much reason. 

My fly choice was impeccable... the Ausable Ugly. Why fish anything else in a trout stream? The fish liked it, but the bright sunny hot conditions had them taking and dropping very quickly and getting good hook sets was a tall order. Often I'd see a fish shoot out, presumably eat then spit the fly in a fraction of a second, then dart back to cover just as fast. Sometimes I felt the take, sometimes not. It took me a while to get on the board and the fish wasn't a salmonid at all, but it was something I'd call a trophy: a big ol' fallfish. 

I finally got a trout not long after that gorgeous native fallfish, a smallish brown. I ended up getting quite a few browns of that size class from a relatively small area. It was quite fast fishing, actually. However, I was hoping for something a bit larger. 

Eventually I came to a stretch were the boulders were just a bit bigger, the pockets a bit deeper, and the aquatic vegetation a bit more green and lush. And suddenly it was a hit a cast. I was still struggling to get fish to hand, but I did land some gorgeous wild browns. These fish fought exceptionally hard too, it was fun. 

Unfortunately I then felt the constraints of time tightening and decided to hike out. That was my only venture in the Catskills this spring, though I may go again as the waters cool again in the fall. It is one of my favorite places to fish. 

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. I truly would not be able to keep this going without you wonderful folks!

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. 

High And Dirty Multispecies Nymphing

 One day this March, I bounced spot to spot on my way home from Rhode Island. I was mostly hitting new streams and looking for wild trout, but I was having a pretty tough day. I got some stocked trout at one spot, and a couple brookies in one stream I'd fished once before, but it was a struggle to get anything substantial. Then it started raining and I headed to what would be my final stop of the day. It was an upriver portion of a stream I fish a lot, but a part of it I'd never once made a cast in. Before Neil Hagstrom retired from DEEP he had recommended it to me, saying it had a good number of wild browns. 

The day had started out cloudy but by the time I got to this stream it was raining and had been for a little while. The water was severely discolored; I was going to try anyway. I tied on a heavy size 10 Ausable Ugly and began to fish. For a while, I was unsuccessful. Then I thought I had a grab but wasn't quite sure. It definitely felt like one. A few runs down I caught a fish, a wild brown. That bolstered my confidence massively. I suddenly felt this might become a productive evening. 

That fish was right along a seam where the main current of the stream met some chocolate milk colored water coming out of a drain. This is classic brown trout behavior during this sort of storm runoff. Mud lines are a key focus to a lot of my rainy day river fishing, regardless of species. Brown trout in particular though gravitate to them. As I continued downriver and the muddy water from the pipe mixed with the ever muddier water of the stream (it was still raining), it began to look un-fishable. But I don't shy away from stained water as easily as some anglers might. I was fully ready to keep fishing knowing I could well get some high caliber fish in conditions like this. 

It took a little while to get another, but that ended up being a decent fallfish. I then proceeded to catch 8 more fallfish and a brown out of the same seam before continuing downstream. I got a couple more fallfish downriver but didn't find another spot at all that productive so I hit it again on the way back up and got two more fallfish and a large white sucker. 

Those fish alone made it a pretty good bite. That whole pile of fish was stacked up towards the tailout of a very nice, defined bend run. They were in a slack behind a log. It was a classic setup. But to sweeten the pot even more, when I got back to the first spot I'd fished when I had arrived, I got a very hot 14 inch brown there. This fish was gorgeous and spent an awful lot of the fight airborne. 

This was the perfect example of a day that could have ended up being very unproductive, but wasn't entirely because it started to rain. I got soaked, smelled musty for the rest of the evening, and definitely wished I had put all of my electronics in a plastic bag, but it seemed like a pretty good use of my time. I never ignore nasty weather. 

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. 

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

Winter Exploration for Wild Trout

Spurred on by the experiences I had on New Year’s Day, I decided January 2nd should be another day devoted to fishing streams I’d either never fished or had only been to once or twice. Winter is not the best time for small stream exploration simply because the fish are less aggressive, more skittish without tree canopy shade, and often more oddly distributed in the stream. However come spring I’ll have other things on my mind and less urge to spend good weather days of that oh so short season on a “maybe.” Because every new small stream is a big “maybe;” I never know what exactly I can expect. 

I initially made my way to the stream that had given up my first trout of the year the night before. I knew I was doing basically the same thing I’d done when I discovered the stream: I’d caught one fat wild brown out of the same plunge pool, revisited it the very next day, then found every other pool seemingly troutless. This trip was an exact repeat. Try as I might, I simply could not find another fish. I suspect they are either very sparsely populated here or simply moving in and out from the river the stream empties into. 

The next stream held some promise with one old record of brook trout from the 2000’s. I’d gotten one big take the first time I fished this stream. This time around it was unfortunately even less productive. The water looks very good though so I am fully intent on returning to this one in the spring. 

Then I was back on the stream where I’d found the motherload of fallfish the day before. Those were still there, fortunately. However I also wanted to see if the big grab I’d thought felt very trout-like indeed was, and if so I wanted to find more of that fish’s brethren. I made my way to the bend run where I’d had that take without any trouty encounters, but when I stripped my Ausable Ugly through that same spot it was stopped by a solid fish. I set the hook and to the surface rose an angry behemoth, a brook trout well over a foot in length and so girthy it must have been dining on the same fallfish I’d been catching. The hook came unbuttoned and my heart sank. I don’t think that was a holdover fish. I think it was wild. And he was so big. Fallfish aside, this stream had become very interesting.

Downstream, I missed another fish I was sure was a brookie, then finally caught the first of the day. This stream has been an exciting discovery. It isn’t loaded, but it clearly has some large brook trout.

After spending a little time in the headwater of that stream and finding it a little shallow for my liking, I drove over a ridge to a stream in the next watershed over. It was clear and had a high gradient. It reminded me of brook trout waters I’ve fished in the Berkshires and White Mountains. Rumor had it there were large wild trout. Unfortunately access was spotty. I found three access points though, two of which held promise. I didn’t catch or see any fish. I am convinced they were there though. 

The fifth and final stream was a tiny drainage I’d seen brook trout in over the spring and summer while visiting a copperhead population. It was so incredibly small that I’d have a very difficult time fishing it, but I knew for a fact that it had fish so I couldn’t resist. I scaled down the ravine with blackberry and raspberry bushes and greenbrier cling to every bit of clothing they touched, trying to find a pool I could get a cast into. Eventually, I was able to drop my fly into a plunge pool and a little brook trout darted out and took. 

This was probably the smallest permanent stream I’d caught brook trout from in CT. The handful of smaller streams I’ve done well in are seasonal and the brookies come and go from the streams they flow into just as the water comes and goes with the seasons. This stream emptied directly from the hillside into the Connecticut River, so these fish had to be year-round inhabitants. 

Small stream exploration has always been one of the most exciting things in fly fishing for me. I haven’t dedicated as much time to it in the last couple years. 2021 should be the year I get back on that horse.

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

New Year's Day 2021

 2020 was an unusual and at many times unpleasant year, so there are many of us who were glad to see it go. Unfortunately, the turning of the calendar couldn’t rectify many... or frankly any… of the problems brought forth during and before the year 2020. The most obvious of those is this damn virus, which we are all so ready to be rid of. Because of coronavirus, a group of small stream addicts had to hold tradition a little bit differently on New Year’s Day. 

The New Years’ Day crew was a creation of a few guys on the Fly Addict Forum quite some time ago- an idea of Alan Petrucci’s. Pete and John joined him on January 1st of 2011 and the tradition started. Kirk joined in 2012, Mark in 2013, and Alan first invited me for January 1st 2016. This year, Mark was in Massachusetts, Kirk was in Florida, and the virus was obviously going to be a problem regardless. So NYD 2021 was going to have to be a bit of a different situation. John and I decided to meet and fish our late friend Pete’s home waters, Mark would fish a brook trout stream in Massachusetts, and Alan spent the day on his home stream with his wife. 

John and I met in an abandoned parking lot next to the stream of our choice: a river with mostly brown trout but some brookies, that runs a very long distance. It was a little intimidating for that reason. There was so much of it to fish and access was spotty. Pete had lived not far away and fished this river for years. He passed a few years ago. We all miss him. Though my time with Pete was short and limited, I’ll never forget him. The first time we met was incidental, on a river close to my house. We chatted for a while, and just before we parted ways he said “You are a fishing fool, Rowan.” Neither of John nor I had ever fished Pete’s river. John had done some research and Mark had given me some tips, so we fortunately weren’t working with a completely blank slate. It looked good and we saw fish just moments after our first glimpses of the water. Unfortunately those fish seemed to be in a cold and distant mood. 

We fished through the first stretch, seeing some good deep gravelly runs, cut banks, and bends, but also some long and flat silty stretches. It clearly had fish but there didn’t seem to be loads of them. They also weren’t at all snappy. I had one swipe from a small brown and nothing more. We moved downriver to a different parking place and found what to me looked like some even more exciting water. There was still a long, flat, silty bit, but there were a bunch of great runs mixed in. I was a bit surprised neither of us caught a fish out of this section, but someone else had already fished through a bit of it. We ran into him on our way out and chatted for a while; the guy lived not far away and he’d caught one fish. He was nice enough to give us some recommendations on places to try. We drove around a bit, found no parking at one spot we’d wanted to try and people fishing at another, then we decided we’d part ways. I wasn’t all that far from home and there were some streams I’ve wanted to fish for a while on the way back, so I decided that my day wasn’t over just yet. 

Up in Massachusetts, Mark was having a pretty good day. He played a chess game with one brookie that eluded him and caught his first fish of the year. About an hour’s drive from where John and I were fishing, Alan was also catching his first brookies of the year. 

One of Mark's brookies from NYD. Photo courtesy Mark Whittman

I found a park on the map next to a stream I’d heard rumors about and headed that way. When I got there, I liked the look of the stream. It was very clear and running well. I couldn’t really tell if it would water year round enough for wild salmonids to thrive but it was also larger than many streams I fish, so I wasn’t too concerned. The first half hour seemed to indicate that it might not have trout, and seemed not to have many fish at all. Then I found a nice twisty stretch with some really deep holes and got the first fish of the year. Not a trout, but a fallfish: a native species and one I’ll never say no to. 

As I continued fishing, it became clear that the holes in this short stretch were all loaded with fallfish. I was soon catching them hand over fist. Though it wasn’t clear if there were any trout in this stream at all I was happy as a clam. In one faster run, I had a suspicious feeling grab from what seemed to be a large fish. I suspected that might have been of trutta variety but wasn’t sure.

Soon I’d caught well into the double digits of fallfish and decided to make one last bid for a trout before dark. I thought I could make it to a stream I’d caught one beautiful wild brown at a few years ago. I didn’t make it there before dark, but I was determined. I cast my Ausable Ugly into the same deep, swirling plunge pool I’d caught the fish in that last winter day three years ago and caught my first trout of 2021. 

May this year be better than the last. Keep your head up, there’s plenty to look forward to. 

 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 

On Our Way Home (Western PA Pt. 8)

 Three intrepid multispecies anglers sat on a ledge above the Allegheny river, in the dark waiting for one of their rods to bend under the weight of an angry flathead catfish that never materialized. Jake, Noah and I had struggled this trip to accomplish a lot of our goals, the first and and biggest, incidentally, being getting to Ohio in the first place. All the big lifer goals evaded us, and this last ditch effort for a flathead was our final stand. And when that failed we resorted to throwing a large rock over the railing like idiots. 

This will stand out as one of the funniest moments of the year. Noah hoisted the rock up to the railing then heaved it over... then leaned and looked right down. The small boulder's impact and plunge into the river left a momentary void that the water quickly filled to and then beyond capacity, sending a plume of water straight up into Noah's face.Jake and I cackled with laughter, and Noah did too. It was a fitting end to our fishing together on this trip. We headed back to my Grandparents' and slept well in the camper, then left to fish a few more spots in the morning after breakfast.

 We barely made it beyond the end of the drive; Jake had a flat. He assured us he'd be fine and we shouldn't wait around with him, so we said our goodbyes and Noah and I pointed the van east. We'd fish our way home, but our goals were now set to a simpler standard. We just wanted to catch some smallmouth an fallfish before we got home. Some time later we found ourselves on the Juniata River, for the first time in days on a watershed where fallfish were the dominant Semotilus species.

We waded and fished light gear, prospecting the water, catching little smallmouth an bunches of fallfish. It was beautiful water and enjoyable fishing.

As with most smallmouth or fallfish rivers I've fished over my career, I found one particular nondescript but shaded bit of shoreline that was just loaded with fish. I haven't quite cracked the code yet, because the line is thin between what makes these hot spots so hot. The shade is key of course, but something else is very important and I'm not quite sure what it is. Depth? Contour? Current speed? Substrate? I will eventually crack that code, but it may take some serious experimentation and research.

As we fished our way up, Noah soon outpaced me in both numbers and size of smallmouth. Though none of them were at all impressive in stature, as smallmouth anywhere are they were full of rage and willing to battle to the end. 

As we reached the limit of where we wanted to fish upriver, an out of use bridge loomed and we couldn't resist using it to cross back to the road we'd parked on. Well, and also as a sight fishing opportunity. 

We thanked the Juniata for the fish and headed further eastward to bigger, more famous smallmouth water. I'e wanted to fish he Susquehanna for years. To put it simply, it was big, it was intimidating, and we didn't catch a thing. I can' wait to fish it again NOT on foot. We found a fishy but questionable spot, saw a couple carp, didn't get so much as a bump, found a creepy doll, and were absolutely baffled at how this place could on any day no produce a single fish.

Pennsylvania beat us down, shook us around, and hung us out to dry. Pennsylvania made us work. We probably did the best we could. We caught new native fish from the bizarre to the beautiful. Though nothing went as planned, this was a trip I won't soon forget. Noah and I thrive under minimal preparation, we just go to a place, fish hard, and more often than not we do quite well. In my opinion this trip was no exception, we caught a lot of fish and added to our lifelists in a big way. It was good to have Jake with us. I think we made a pretty good team, the three of us. I can't wait to team up on another mission. Do me a favor, follow Jake on Instagram, @barbelloudoorsecology, and subscribe to his YouTube channel. 

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, and Franky for supporting this blog on Patreon.