Kokanee (& Trout) In The Dark

As an obsessive nighttime angler, I'm constantly looking to d to my repertoire. One thing I've done very little of is target trout in stillwaters at night. Here in CT, many of our stillwater fisheries are composed of stocked trout with very poor holdover rates, so that makes them generally uninteresting to me. There are some lakes with a half decent holdover rate but most take some travel. There's also some lakes with other species of interest. It was kokanee that got me fairly intrigued to try one particular stillwater.

Kokanee are landlocked sockeye salmon. They were brought top CT in the 1940's to build a recreational fishery. Why the state of CT is expending resources on this only lightly fished species that isn't native is beyond me, but at least kokanee aren't going to spread far and wide. In fact, landloacked alewives, also a non-native, have almost completely wiped out kokanee fisheries in Ct in the past. Kokanee have an affinity for nocturnal activity, though kokanee feeding is focused on zooplankton. They're essentially a salmonid that filter feeds... not quite like menhaden or American shad, but they focus on such tiny food items when foraging. Transferring their nocturnal feeding habits over to the spawning run- when the strike mainly out of aggression -doesn't necessarily follow. But at least in my mind, nocturnal is nocturnal and I should be able to get some to strike. If not, rainbows would be around the same areas. 

I set out on a brightly moonlit night with a plan in mind. I'd fish two methods, both with relatively small and bright colored flies as that's what has worked for kokanee in the past. I'd start out fishing them under indicators. With the aid of the moon, as well as nearby artificial light, I'd be able to see the indicator drop if I was getting takes. If that failed, I'd slow pull the same flies as well as some streamers with a figure eight retrieve

Upon arrival to the spot, I could actually see the schools of fish. There were huge numbers of kokanee out there, as well as loads of trout. It soon proved very easy to get the trout to take. Me indicator dropped time and time again.

The trout seemed to have very little preference in the way of flies. I caught them on Green Weenies, eggs, Walt's Worm with pink collar, Sawyer's Pheasant Tail, and small buggers. I kept switching mostly to try to pull out a kokanee, but it wasn't proving to be especially easy. Even on the best of days they test a good angler's resolve. Each Pacific salmon has a different attitude during their spawning run., and it differs place to place as well. Kings in New York are heavily pressured and often hard to convince to snap at something, which is why many anglers fish eggs, bits of foam, and smaller flies with immense amounts of weight. This differs from large and less pressured river chinooks in Alaska, which are caught on large flies and lures. It also differs from less pressured water elsewhere in the great lakes. Coho, wherever they are, seem to be on the aggressive side of the spectrum, as do pinks. Chum salmon are definitely quite inclined to take large streamers and lures. Kokanee seem to be one of the finickiest. This results in a lot of people intentionally snagging them, which is just ridiculous. Its also illegal, and I call the TIP hotline any time I see it happening. As should you. Anglers often complain about poachers in CT, and yes ENCON is understaffed and won't always respond, but you should still call. The more calls get made the more poachers will get caught. Please do your part. 

I, of course, was just patiently waiting for a kokanee to actually grab a fly. It took a couple hours before one finally did, but it was a wonderful proof of concept. I could, in fact, catch a kokanee at night. The first one sunk the indicator just like the trout had been doing. The fly of choice? The good old Green Weenie.

That wasn't really the start of a pattern though. Kokanee are moody and erratic, and I often get them seemingly at random. Indeed I ended up with three that night in five hours of fishing, and each was on a different fly. The first was the only one to take under the indicator. The second took on a slow retrieve and the third took and egg on the fall. 

I lost a couple couple kokanee that I clearly saw as well, and a few that may have been. largely though the night was a very trouty one. I must have caught between 35 and 40 of them, and I even specifically tried to avoid them at times in hopes of picking up more salmon. As it turns out, that nighttime indicator strategy in particular is wildly effective. I've considered fishing indicators at night in rivers as well and this really did some convincing. I've lightly fiddled with the idea in the past, putting glow in the dark tape on indicators, but it never really got me anywhere I think its time to in some glowing thingamabobbers. 

The night game is such a fascinating one. I've always felt that it builds on an anglers understanding of the water they're fishing. If the right casts and presentations can be made or even things as simple as getting to the productive locations can be accomplished without aid of the light of day, it builds your understanding of the water. But something I sometimes forget, and likely equally important: fish behave differently at night. Fishing in the dark builds your understanding of your query as well. I feel I have a better understanding of landloacked sockeye now having caught them at night. 

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, and Chris 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 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.

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. 

Giant Smallmouth Bass on Small Flies

 I had such an obsession with big streamers for many years. I just wanted to cast the largest possible flies for every predator fish species. I was using 8 to 12 inch streamers for largemouth and pickerel, flies up to 10 inches for trout, and the Biggest Beast Fleyes I could manage for stripers and was doing so regardless of conditions, the water I was fishing, and the time of year. It was pretty silly, honestly. There's no merit to fishing big flies no matter what. There is merit to fishing big, often huge flies when it makes sense, but that isn't what I was doing. While perhaps the best fish for me to use to describe why bigger isn't always better are trout, it was smallmouth bass that really proved to me that I should pay more attention to natural forage than the current trends in fly tying. 

Over a five year period, all but two of my ten largest smallmouth have been caught on flies less than 2 inches long, and half have been on flies about an inch long. For most of those years I was targeting big smallmouth almost exclusively with big flies, but I was hardly catching any at all. Over the last three years, I've stopped doing that, and suddenly I'm catching both more and bigger smallmouth. This year, so far, has been phenomenally illustrative. The 17+ inch smallmouth I posted about last week was the first and smallest of the bronze backs I've caught so far this season, and also on the largest fly, a mere 1 3/4 inch woolly bugger. Really hammering the point home is my second smallmouth of the year, a measured 21 1/2 inch fat beast of a bass. 

That fish ate a size 10 chartreuse jig streamer under an indicator in rough conditions, really ideal float n' fly weather. The take sunk the indicator, but not like one might expect a huge bass to sink an indicator. It was the epitome of gentle. The fight was anything but, and quite a stomach turner on 4lb tippet. That fish kicked my ass but I didn't let it win the fight. Obviously there was some celebratory cursing both when I got my thumb on her lip and when I watched her swim off... bass like this one don't come easy, and it may well be the largest smallmouth I've ever caught on the fly. 

That fish was a true elephant on a peanut. I wasn't fishing for something else either, I was specifically looking for a large smallmouth. 

A few days later a similar set of conditions presented in terms of frontal passage and temperature drop, though a few hours later in the day. This time darkness made fishing an indicator useless, so I instead fished an inch long woolly bugger on a slow crawl. The water was shallow and the bottom was sand and gravel, so I could creep the fly without hanging up. A subtle increase in pressure was all that signaled the take of an 18 inch bass. 

There's clearly something wrong with the "bigger is better" mentality, and it all boils down to forage. I've gradually come to the realization that location and conditions dramatically overshadow fly size when it comes to catching larger fish. If the primary forage being preyed upon is large; like the river herring or shad stripers often chase in April and May, fish large flies that imitate that forage. These smallmouth I'm catching are primarily feeding on juvenile sunfish that are no more than a couple inches long as well as a mix of insects. Maybe I'd catch one on a big streamer, but it makes much more sense to pay attention to the ecology of the location. At this point my confidence is in a fly that closely matches the size, profile, and behavior of the most abundant natural forage- whether I'm after big fish or lots of fish, such a fly is more likely to accomplish my goal. 

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