Winter Brook Trout on Cape Cod

Meandering lowland streams are the dominant type of river in Southeastern Massachusetts. The geology there wouldn't allow anything else: the hills are small and rolling. There are no mountains here. But there are brook trout. For most, images of mountain lakes and brawling freestones are conjured by the thought of brook trout. These coastal streams are nothing like that. What they are, though, is nutrient rich havens for some of the last sea run brook trout populations in New England. These vegetation-rich streams are often guarded by brush and bog and are difficult to fish. I've spent many days on brooks of a similar character in the Connecticut River Valley, so I feel pretty much at home on the char streams of Cape Cod. A few days after Christmas, my partner, Cheyenne, and I set out to explore the Cape. It would be my first visit in the winter. I was keen on seeing some of the streams I know out there in a different season.

After a lovely breakfast in Buzzards Bay, we made our way to one of the coastal small streams I've had the pleasure of getting to fish a few times. I wanted to stick to the tidal stretch, knowing full well this decreased my odds of encountering a brookie. If I did catch one the odds were much greater that it would be a true sea-run fish. Additionally, I'd be staying out of the water these fish use to spawn. Fry don't emerge from redds until February or March. The last thing I wanted to do was tromp on a well obscured redd and crush the developing future generation of brook trout in it. The importance of not wading on spawning habitat is not well observed. If you aren't willing to respect these fish by staying off the gravel they spawn in you should not be fishing these waters. 

Fishing for brook trout in a salt marsh is a surreal experience even when I'm not catching or seeing any fish. The gear I'm carrying, the fly on the end of my leader, and the way I'm fishing are no different than what I'd be doing on many Connecticut brook trout streams. But the sights and smells are not at all the same. The water rises and falls with the tide. The marsh mud produces an odor that gives me a sense of what I should be expecting. But striped bass nor fluke nor bluefish swim this marsh in any notable abundance in the month of December. Brook trout, however, wander in and out of this marsh year round. At least during the low end of the tide on the day I was there though, salters were scarce. I went without a touch. The hoar frost, however, was lovely on the dead, marsh grass.

There were other things to see, so we moved along. With the sun warming the ancient dunes and kettle ponds, we crested a hill and found ourselves next to another of the Cape's rivers. I'd fished this one with Noah in the summer and we each caught a beautiful brookie . I was a little more confident. One run produced nothing. The next also seemed lifeless. The glassy pool below called out to me. I wasn't in waders so I couldn't get into the best spot to fish it. I did have a casting window and a little bit of know-how on my side though. 

I changed to an unweighted Hornberg. I let fly the longest cast the brush would allow then began feeding line out to let the fly float downriver.  When it reached the tailout I twitched the rod tip aggressively and sunk the fly. I then retrieved it back up the pool. About halfway in, I saw a fish dart from under the brush-covered bank and smash that Hornberg. I set the hook and a gorgeous brookie began leaping around the pool. Back-lit by low winter sunlight, the jumping brookie was surrounded in golden droplets. It was a magical moment in time. I walked the fish upstream, keeping her in the water so Cheyenne could see her. It was a lovely fish. Whether this char had spent any time in saltwater I do not know, but any native freshwater fish from a place where humans have had as severe an impact as on Cape Cod is special. 

With that fish landed, I was satisfied. I need not catch any more. Later, we ran into Geoff Klane and a buddy of his who were also out after brook trout. I kept the rod packed away but it was good to chat with Geoff for a bit. Covid has made fishing with friends much more difficult these days so any socially distant interaction with my friends near the water makes me yearn for this virus to be over with so we can all enjoy each other's company again.

After saying goodbye to Geoff, Cheyenne and I headed to the dunes of the Outer Cape. It was cold out there, and we saw neither seals nor white sharks. A couple miles out I could see a huge flock of birds that appeared to be over a blitz. In December the options are few. It must have been bluefin tuna. Seeing life out there in the winter was an exciting surprise. On the bay side, a beautiful sunset lit up the sky. 

I really ought to spend more time on Cape Cod in the winter.

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

Down in Char's Ravine

 There's a stream in Eastern Connecticut that I've fished a handful of times. It's character intrigued me from the first visit. This stream's gradient is very steep, and though it is a very tiny drainage, years have given it the time to cut itself a deep and treacherous ravine. Moss covered ledge encapsulate the stream's course, sheltering it from intruders. Fishing this stream requires rock climbing and squeezing around boulders. Remaining stealthy is paramount, because the species that dominate this ravine are shy and easily disturbed. Connecticut's last surviving native salmonid finds this dark and secluded habitat to their liking. This is brook trout habitat. Because Salvelinus fontinalis are the dominant of the three fish species found in this stretch of tumbling water (blacknose and longnose dace being the other two), I chose to name this place Char's Ravine. 

Salvelinus: char

fontinalis: living in springs

In need of tranquility one mild December afternoon, I found myself scrambling into Char's Ravine with a fly rod in my hand and just one small fly box in my bag. This was all I needed to catch a brook trout here and most other places brook trout live. The fly on the end of my tippet was predictable... the Ausable Ugly would get down into the deep plunges where the brook trout here hold. It's undulating grizzly hackle and muskrat tail also provide an attraction factor that fish feeding on macroinvertebrates and small fish find very appealing.

As I made my way upstream fishing each plunge pool, the place seemed dead. I wasn't spooking any fish that I could see, and certainly not catching any. I'd almost forgotten that this was normal here, that I'd never caught anything below a certain small water fall. These fish exist in genetic isolation. There is little opportunity for new fish to enter the gene pool from another stream in the watershed. This could be a problem over an extended period of time.

I was starting to get worried that this stream's population could have disappeared when I finally caught one. Small but vibrantly colored, this little char will live its whole short life in the ravine. It may never exceed 8 inches, and if it were to attain that size it would likely be in its fifth or sixth and final year of life. In such a stream, 8 to 10 inch brook trout are rarer than a 20 inch brown trout in the Farmington. 

I continued fishing up the ravine until I'd brought my third brookie to hand. I was satisfied with that number and had potential snake habitat to scout out in the area, so I waved goodbye to Char's Ravine.

As this winter has progressed, I've been getting back to my roots a bit. I'm taking the chance to explore new small streams and visit old ones that I haven't been to in a while. It feels good to get back to basics... small water, small gear, small wild fish. This embodies so much of what got me into fly fishing. I've still not fished even a tenth of the small streams with wild trout potential in this state. Let's see how many I can get to before year's end.

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

Unavoidable Tigers

 The state seems to have stocked rather a lot of tiger trout in the fall of 2020 and those buggers definitely spread pretty far beyond where they were dumped. After the big snowfall in mid December, I made my way to my old "part-time home river" to look for one of its big wild brown trout. The magic of this river and its fish are their apparent immunity to temperature. In fact, the colder and worse the weather is, the better it seems to fish. Even on 30 degree days with blowing snow, I've gotten large browns to chase big streamers in this odd little river. 

I'd been on such a single hook fly kick all year that I decided this day I'd fish nothing but a Drunk & Disorderly. I've raved about the D&D for years. Back in 2015 I saw a video of Tommy Lynch tying his signature fly and it just looked so unique I had to try it. A few sloppy attempts later, I had something fishable. Fish moved to it so unabashedly it altered my streamer fishing for ever. That fly and the Heifer Groomer taught me the magic of action in a trout streamer. It was something I'd not been paying enough attention to prior. The D&D had taken a few solid fish in this stream over the years so it was a perfectly reasonable choice this time.

A few pools into my outing I had a violent slash on the surface. I was sure it was a good brown but I blew it completely. On the next cast it came back, though, and I was sure it wasn't a brown. It is extremely rare in this river that one of the wild trout gives me more than one shot. Indeed it wasn't a brown. It was a tiger, my fifth of the year. I rolled my eyes when I realized what it was. These fish are too easy when you find them.

Less than 50 yards further came yet another violent take and yet another tiger trout. This was getting absurd.

The irony of these tiger trout being so abundant is that they'd moved away from anywhere that gets fished routinely. The state's whole premise with fish like this is providing fisherman the opportunity to catch something new and "cool." I just wanted to catch something that had actually been born in the river. Instead I was getting pellet fed hybrid truck trout. Eventually I did find something wild, though not as big as I'd have liked. Just one small wild brown trout fell to the D&D this day. But it was a pretty fish, at least. 

The stretch of river I was fishing is managed as catch and release only. I wonder how often the fisheries managers think about the fact that their hatchery-raised trout are dying every winter and summer, needing to be replenished twice a year. All the while wild brown trout and few but not non-existent native brook trout manage to survive each year's worst weather. It's almost as if it's a waste of resources.

Many fisherman, unfortunately, would just think their fish were being taken away from them if the state stopped stocking rivers like this. The culture that has developed around trout in the Northeast is an unfortunate one. It comes to the detriment of the quality of our wild and native fisheries, and worsens the experiences for those that are really in search of what makes fishing exciting.

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

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

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

The Ausable Flies Strike Again

 Throughout all my years of brook trout fishing, one fly reigns supreme. Fran Betters came up with something extraordinary when he created the Ausable Bomber. It has resulted more brook trout to hand for me than any other single fly pattern. I've taken trout on the bomber, fished upstream and down, skated and dead drifted, swung and bounced, dry and subsurface, to actively rising fish and prospecting pocket water... there is little this fly can't do. This broad range of uses is something I look for in most flies. Very little I carry is actually single use. I fish for so many species in so many situations I'd have far too many flies if each only served one purpose. And as such, the Bomber with it's many uses has more than earned its place in my arsenal. 

One day in December, I was on a morning mission to get my monthly dry fly salmomid, and of course the bomber was the first fly I chose to tie on. The stream I was fishing was a low-gradient river valley stream, running a substrate of brownstone, conglomerate, and alluvial gravel beds. Streams like these are nutrient rich and hold water well, often producing brook trout either of large size or in exceptional numbers -and sometimes both. This particular stream has been more numbers prolific than size for me, and is also a winter dry fly paradise. The fish are very surface oriented, abundant, and spurred on by caddis and midge hatches. 

The first run I fished was a shallow gravel train that typically either holds one nice fish or a half dozen tiny ones. Today it was tiny ones, and they could only drown the fly and failed to get the hook point. A few bends down however the water swept around a corner, creating a nice cut bank bend. There are nearly always fish holding in water of this sort, the question was simply whether they'd rise to a dry. I let the Bomber drift, then gave in a twitch where the V of in flowing currents came to a point. Up came a brook trout and I stuck her. December had been beaten. 

The Bomber brought a few more fish to hand that day, including the regal specimen below. 

But when I came to an especially deep hole with heavy current, I knew I wanted to get down deep to catch whatever was hiding there. On went another fly of Adirondack lineage, though of a more recent generation of fly tyer than Betters: Rich Garfield's Ausable Ugly. Like Betters, Garfield has designed a handful of flies that are unusual, unruly looking, and extremely effective. There's little you can't do with an Ausable Ugly. I made a tuck cast then slowly dropped my rod as the current carried the fly down, keeping in contact but also allowing it to fall. As the Ugly rolled into the depths of the pool, I felt a grab. It was a long female brook trout, all her weight was in her stomach. She'd used much of her fat reserves to spawn, most likely. Brook trout in this shape aren't uncommon in the early winter, as they've just begun to regain weight after the spawn.

Satisfied with that small number of trout landed, I called it a day. The Ausable flies had done the trick. 

Until next time, 

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

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

Edited by Cheyenne Terrien

A Blitz Before Christmas

 December isn't really a blitz month in Connecticut. There were times when it wouldn't have been unreasonable to expect substantial striper blitzes in these parts but in recent years they've been present but exceptionally rare. Not non-existent but not at all easily found. So when Noah and I pulled up to a spot to fish for holdover bass moving into their winter holes and saw fish busting and birds diving in the backwater... on December 10th... we got excited. 

Though the blitz itself was unreachable since we were on foot, we quickly found ourselves a pile of fish in a key bottleneck. Noah and I were using typical winter striper strategies, a jig and plastic for him, a pair of Clousers for me. Hits came just about every cast, and after I doubled the second time and broke off one fish, I opted to shed one fly. Catching them two at a time was just overkill. 

One of the fish I caught was a rather unique individual. The left flank had the typical array of stripes but the right side was a muddled mess. On occasion, I've had people try to tell me that these are hybrids because the presence of broken lines is often used to distinguish wiper or sunshine bass -striped bass/white bass hybrids- from landlocked stripers in the same lakes. This makes no sense as white bass don't exist in these waters for stripers to hybridize with. We do have white perch, but the only documented cases of hybridization between stripers and white perch were under controlled lab and hatchery conditions. They likely have never occurred in the wild. These muddled up striper patterns on East Coast fish are instead indicative of healed injuries or genetic anomalies. 

Side A

Side B

At some point, Noah had to head back to the van to grab something and I stayed in place continuing to catch fish. Suddenly a school of silversides rolled off the flat into the bottleneck and the water in front of me filled up with boiling stripers. Frantically I changed to a gurgler, thinking this was surely my best chance at a December topwater striped bass. The blitz came and went without a hookup. I had several swirls but nothing more committed. I wish, as I sometimes do, that I'd spent more time with camera in hand. 

Though I didn't get what I'd have liked out of the December 10th blitz photographically, it was an exciting thing to be present for. It makes me yearn for the days of big Atlantic herring runs, rainbow smelt, and whiting, when winter saltwater fishing was actually good. December 10th isn't even winter, but it isn't far from it. I experimented a bit with winter saltwater fishing last year, and I intend to again this year. Not just stripers -white perch, tomcod, hake, and cod too. I know there's more out there to be found, I just need to be really diligent and persistent. 

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