Keep Changing it Up

When you can't get known fish to take your flies for a week, you know you need to come up with some other pattern.

Tie something new.

Try something new.

So after the grey ghost, black ghost, various beadhead nymphs and even wooly buggers all get no takers, and the candycanes are now like a warning claxon to the fish, you need something subtle and effective. So I tied this batch:










Yes, there are candycanes in there. And a grey ghost. But look at those black ones. I stopped into my local shop and showed them to the guru.  He plucked the simple black one with the red head out, held it up and said, "this one will catch fish."  It was December 23 at about 4:15 pm. I drove the 3 miles to the pool I had caught numerous fish out of, but been denied the past week in. I saw swirls--as usual. I cast this one out a few times in close: got a tug. I paused. Rested the pool for a few minutes. Cast upstream and worked that section a few times. Then when I thought it was ready, I cast straight across, let it drift but with a tight line, just barely retrieving enough to keep contact. Tug-tug-lift. Fish on. No, big fish on.

This one was the biggest of the stocked rainbows I have caught yet this fall. This one knows how to eat wild food. That's why I've seen it so much.  That's also why I've watched another flyfisherman try unsuccessfully to take it. It isn't a "dumb" stocker. It has been "wild" for 2.5 months now.

But this black fly, in the darkness, had what it was looking for.

Photo:

https://flic.kr/p/21sN7x2

Edit: a couple days later (Wednesday 27th) I catch another trout, but this time on a smaller version, tied #16 dry fly hook.

A few days earlier, I actually caught and lost the bigger fish mentioned first. I was using both my own grey ghosts (see my last entry) as well as a commercial one in size 6--the one on the top in the photo:

 Only the commercial one got touched, and twice I had a big fish on, fought it and lost it. I think it was this very same fish. At one point in the dark that previous night, there was a huge splash at the tail of the pool. This trout is over 2 pounds.

Success means reading rivers etc. Matching the hatch is ok. But there are multiple ways to do that. Principally you need to try different flies!

As the Snow Falls, So Goes the Catch Rate

It is interesting how quickly things can change this time of year. The water has been steadily cooling, even as the weather was quite moderate. But because water is a peculiar substance, the magic number of 39 comes to be significant: that's the temperature at which water is most dense. At this point, all further cooling produces lighter water--which floats and therefore freezes, and quickly.

When the cold snap hit, we got snow--two batches of it, and a 10 degree night in between. On Monday last week, we were still in the relatively moderate weather--then Tuesday had the somewhat warm rainy day, and Wednesday the cold. I had caught a trout and a pickerel on Monday. On Tuesday a friend of mine and I could not convince the trout but he got the pickerel. After the first snow, I caught a trout yet again--but changed to a different fly. The water had not yet frozen. I fished it the same way as the recent trout: with a small shot, cast across, drifted, then twitched as it starts to swing.

But On Saturday and Sunday (today) I've had no luck. All I succeeded in doing today was spooking not one, but two fish, on the first cast.

Sometimes discipline is a good thing. Which I did not possess today. The plan had been to tie on one of the smaller Sizes of flies I tied today (starting at 16, then 12) to cast to openings in the ice on the creek. But when I took my rod out of the tube, there was a size 6 brown streamer pattern on and I left it there for the first cast. This was a mistake, as it landed with a big kerplop on quiet water, and two fish spooked out from directly below and swam away. As if to punish me, I snagged it in the ice shelf and lost the fly.

I stayed another 30 minutes or more fishing in vain. It is generally better to simply abandon a pool after screwing it up like that.

The size 12 flies are on the left. There are others I didn't take a photo of yet.

Variations on a Theme

Yesterday (Sunday) I tied some variations on the Candycane.
But one I had already tied--but not fished--with simply a golden pheasant tail and a mallard wing, and hackle in chartreuse instead of white, fooled a small rainbow on its first cast:

flickr video: Small Rainbow

I also hooked into two others before this, on a #16 hook of the same pattern, but lost them. Had two other bumps. It is funny--I changed because I figured I was flubbing the takes. And yet the past few sessions I went down to #16 and did better. Who knows.

Then I changed pools and on the 2nd cast got into a really pretty native:


flickr video: Pickerel

It was classic! As I was stripping my fly through the water to prepare for another cast, a wake appeared out in the middle of the pool and so I kept the fly in the water, moving towards the bank, until the fish took it. And it really swallowed. I was lucky I didn't gut hook it. You can't see the fly because it took it tail first and the head of the fly is over 1/4" aft of the left corner of the mouth.

Interestingly when I first arrived and started walking down to the stream, I saw that I disturbed something along the shallows that swam out to deeper water. It was probably this pickerel.

Here's the fly--the top one in this photo (you can see this in a previous post as well, with all the candycanes):

Trout Fishing Unabated

I've been fishing so much I'm losing track. I should post every day....

December 5th:

Friday:

Thursday under a bobber:

A few days earlier:

All were caught using my new candy cane pattern in size 16, fished wet across the stream with very small 1 to 3 gram added shot at the tippet knot, and no float--except on Thursday. The take was so subtle that in all cases it was basically just retrieving to begin the next cast and feeling that there is something on there.

There was a short session between these two when I watched a trout follow my own wooly bugger repeatedly. I hooked it once but it quickly shook me off. Fun to watch that--you usually only go by feel. To see the shake is illuminating. It is faster than you can react to.

And yet a few more days back--10 days ago on a Wednesday, I caught one on my big fat buzzer (see previous entry) and the strange thing was what I found in the stomach: hemlock leaves!  The green ones combined with red dying ones looked a lot like the buzzer fly:

And yet even a few days earlier on a weekend, I got one off the bridge, drifting a wooly bugger downstream and then intermittently twitching or swimming back upstream. Sure enough this worked and it exposed this pool as productive!

These two pools are just loaded with trout. The first week after the stocking, they went crazy for a brown wooly bugger, and also hit the rapala. Then they got harder. For a week or two I kind of thought they were all fished out. I'd already eaten two out of one of the pools.

But it turned out they were there. I'd see a rise and say, "aha!"

And so before going home for Thanksgiving, I invented the candycane fly pattern. Well it isn't a big invention. I'm sure it's been tied a million times. But it turned out to just drive redbreast sunfish in Pennsylvania crazy. So when I came back after Thanksgiving, I gave these pools some more time, and I quit constantly streamer fishing and started wet fly methods. And that worked.

It is really interesting, working through all the possible ways that fish might be feeding and what might interest them. But being stocked rainbow trout, these fish are perhaps especially weird. I don't think they really know what food is.  The big fat buzzer fly I made up tuned out to look exactly like a pile of hemlock leaves. I know because I took one of those fish and ate it--and that's what the stomach was packed with!

But the other three I took from these pools had very little or no food in their stomachs. They are maybe super hungry. And yet they still show selectivity. I haven't had any luck on dries, nor in the surface film. Until I put a shot on my tippet knot, the candycane wets don't get hit. The streamers did, but they are weighted more.

I am thinking of tying some variations with different colours but the same pattern, out of curiosity. The fly is really simple to tie.

1. red 140
2. green metal wire (chartreuse)
3. pheasant tail tail.
4. white hackle.
You tie in the tail, tie in the green wire, run the red forward a bit, wrap the aft quarter shank with green wire, tie it down, wrap the middle quarter with the red flossy thread, with the wire under it, then you wrap the green wire another quarter, then tie it down and tie in 4 wraps or so of white hackle, then a red head and you are done.

I have done some with mallard wings, and some with hot pink hackle, and different tails---they are actually a simple take on a royal coachman---green, red, green. From the bottom, you can see #16, then #12, then #8 baithook, #6 baithook, and a #8 fly hook with wings.

We'll see what happens.

Fly Experiments

I tied some flies which are may be a bit strident. But they worked.
The first ones I called "candycanes"because of the red/green stripes. I did some variations with and without hackle. I also tied a bright pink hackled royal coachman. Both of these--especially the first--proved exceptionally attractive to redbreast sunfish.

So I followed that up the next day with a set of really wild green flies. I think I'll call the red middled one the chartreuse buzzer. It is really just a "Bibio" fly re-imagined. (Thanks Dietrich for the Bibio enthusiasm:):

When I fished them, only one of them proved useful for the stocked rainbows--the chartreuse buzzer (need a catchier name)--but it turned out to be the most attractive--moreso than even the tried and trusty wooly bugger.

What was in the stomach?  Hemlock leaves! Tons of them! The mixture of green and brown leaves looks suspiciously similar to this fly.

Five for Five

Rainbows are the stock of choice for fall stockings in Connecticut.

My local river received some a few weeks ago, and there are some very good fish in some spots. One in particular has been a lot of fun to work repeatedly. Each afternoon I've gone, I've caught one trout. I only ate one of them (see "Oh, The Irony"); I intended to eat a second but it had other ideas.

The most rewarding thing is that they took my own wooly bugger flies. I even caught one on a spinning rig. Yes, my elbow is still not up to casting. I've got a problem there that needs some serious attention.

These fish are 11" to 14" and all of them are good looking fish, but I think they are very hungry. The one I ate had very little in its stomach--but did have a few bugs. 

One day I walked the stream for about a mile and I threw bread flake in at spots--and got some reaction! That was fun. I'm going to do that again. I did this without the rod--just out on a walk with the dog. If I chum with bread and then follow up with flies am I really fly fishing? Haha.

The best part was fishing with my son today. We switched rods and then I caught one. He was supposed to be the lucky one today. Next time:-)

Oh The Irony

After two weeks of occasionally trying to fish, and never catching a damned thing, on Sunday (Nov 13) I decided it Was Time. I went to the tackle shop and got what I needed to go tautog (blackfish) fishing.

Or so I thought.

I got one of these:

Clipped on one of these to the snap:

 

Killed one of these and hung each side to each of the hooks:

And I proceeded to row from rocky reef to rocky reef, anchoring and fishing each spot.

Until I lost my terminal tackle with 7 crabs still in my bucket.

Not a bite. But I know why. I was doing it wrong. When I got home I saw that Rich at FishAholic Fishing on youtube had gone blackfishing and done much better. Watching him I see what I need to do!

 

But now for the irony. I went bottom fishing and couldn't catch anything.
So today the rain cleared and I was restless at 3:30 and so I snuck out to the stream. One mile from home. I cast a salmon pattern fly for about 5 minutes, but again, I need to use my right arm because of my sore left elbow, and besides, how do fish eat eggs? I decided to simply cast it out to a slow area downstream and leave it to sink to the bottom. Then I switched to the spinning rod with my right hand. With a small rapala dace pattern I hooked into a lively fish in no time. But I forgot my net and once again lost it at my feet--but it was so busy I did not identify whether it was a bass or a trout. It was definitely not perch. Too lively.

Then I got a tangle, dealt with it and went back to it. After about 15 more minutes I was untangling the mother of all tangles with the spool off and the drag nut off and the sun down, and suddenly the fly rod, which I'd left at my feet on a big rock, started jumping. So I quickly put the spinning rig down and picked up the fly rod, Fish ON!

I played the fish to the bank and slid it safely up the mud. I could see it was a trout. At this point I was getting very excited. Mid-autumn, sea run brown trout stream, silvery looking hard fighting trout, taking a salmon egg pattern....was it a salter?

No.

It was a rainbow!  Still--good!  Gut hooked. I guess it was hungry. There was only a tiny bit of digested insect in the bottom of the stomach. After getting it home I looked it up: the river was stocked a week ago. OK that explains it.

The irony though is not lost on me. I go fly fishing for trout and manage to catch a fish on the bottom! Ha!

7 days straight, 7 days catching

Started with a Sunday (22nd October): caught one schoolie striper--after seeing 3 or 4 little tunnies swim by 40 yds distant! No photos from the rowboat.

Monday snuck out on the Shetucket. Caught a largemouth and a huge sunfish, both on rapalas. No salmon to be found. That was in a previous essay on chasing salmonids
.
Tuesday in torrential rain and wind, wore a wetsuit at Chatfield Hollow and caught 3 rainbow trout in 14 minutes. I kept the first one and returned the others.

It turned out that pond had been stocked a few weeks previous--twice.

Wednesday back up in Massachusetts, go to a new pond--Upton--and catch 2 sunfish and 2 largemouth bass. The sunfish on flies, the bass on lures--one that famous Salmo brand pattern. That was also written about previously in the mad spinning lure entry.

Thursday same pond, catch 5 fish in a row. HOT! That's the one in journal entry on the mad spinning lure.

Friday, Ashland reservoir, yellow perch and a largemouth, on the "salmo" which gets snagged. I went back the next week and got it back by swimming with my mask!

Saturday, a rockfish, fly casting off the bridge, on my newest fly:

Then skunkings start anew on the 30th of October.

Madly Effective Spinning Lure

My local bait and tackle expert, Captain Morgan, can be held responsible for my straying into spinning tackle rather than fly fishing exclusively. He's quite convincing--not to switch, but rather to learn to use all techniques--including bait (the latter has been the most difficult skill of all for me to acquire).

Because I can't cast straight--I mean, really--I can't!--it took some time--as in months--for him to convince me to spend the $10 it cost on one single small freshwater sinking lure. How could it be any better than the $5 Rapala--which he has also pointed out can be very effective?

Well it all came down to conversation. I found that the grey ghost fly--with the orange body and silver tinsel segmentation--was deadly effective on yellow perch. In fact they have yet to take anything else from me on my home waters. I also caught some fallfish on them. He pointed out that in fact it probably looks like a dace to the fish. "Try this lure." (It looks like a dace, complete with orange fins and scales drawn on).

OK, fine. So I bought one, and proceeded to lose it. In the garage. Got stuck while moving the rod! Yet to find that. Of course that put me off the whole affair for another couple months.




Then along came my overuse injury. And my decision some days back (I fish way too much!) to spin fish the Shetucket (see previous entry) and my rather hasty Walmart purchase of one more Rapala on the way, to supplement the multiple Rapalas I have already acquired while flyfishing. (I've made more money in finding other people's lures than I've spent in lures this year! Well almost anyway, if I pretend small trout flies aren't lures...).

After that trip, I was keen to see what else I could do. And curious about the stocked trout from the 1st week of Oct. So I stopped in and plunked down a 10 spot, and proceeded to catch all those trout in just minutes on Tuesday in the rain. So I knew the lure worked.

Oh, wait--I never wrote about that! Yet...(Sunday catching a striped bass on the sound and seeing little tunnies 40 yards away ,Monday on the Shetucket, Tuesday crazy stocked trout bonanza, Wed and Thursday in a pond in 'chusetts, what the heck, I'm fishing every day!)


Today, I went to a pond in Massachusetts that was stocked with rainbows a week ago. Reportedly they were "killing it" there all weekend. And considering the numbers of unlicensed undocumented foreigners who poach these lakes around here, I wasn't too sure what to expect. And it turns out I was half right. I didn't connect with a single trout (and I worked the whole pond perimeter especially the deep).
But on the other hand, Holy Cow, this lure was extremely effective shortly before dusk, finding everything else.

1st a yellow perch, so that goes to that theory! As with the trout on Tuesday, it took only a few casts. That was at 5:30 P.M.

Next came a really fat sunfish. As in well over thrice the weight of the perch and a hell of a fighter.  This was at 5:36.

And then, along comes a Chain Pickerel--goodly sized--hammered the lure as it was almost back to shore, in the shallows. Nice fight! Only my third ever Esox family fish.

 

4th on the hit list was a young largemouth bass. And in true bass fashion, this one hit the lure--first cast to yet another spot--as it landed. At 5:47. 

But that wasn't enough. I move to yet another spot (each fish was from it's own location--I only took a few insurance proof casts after each catch before moving). The first cast brought a strike and a fight--I saw the flash of a perch--its distinctive coloring--and lost it in the shallows.  Then just moments later, at 17:55, I hooked up a big handsome calico bass.

 

So that  was that, and the bite was off. Actually, I almost lost that lure. I made a stupid cast -- it went 95 degrees off target up into some trees. It is a miracle of acrobatics that I managed to crawl out and get it back! By that time it was getting dark; I tied on a twirly worm and kept at it--for another hour as usual. But with only half a dozen touches.

No trout, and 15 miles of driving. Again. (I went last night too--and caught 2 bluegill and 2 bass--half on flies half on lures--including a rainbow trout Rapala, with its duckbill missing, and a bluegill on a read worm fly pattern--another one of Cap'n's suggestions).

So that's 30 miles total driving & nine fish, and I didn't keep a single one. They didn't smell as good as the crappie I caught on my Connecticut pond, and I had a bad experience frying up one of these crappie a couple months ago, it reeked of acrid gooseshit. And when the 2 dozen geese landed last night as I was casting that little bass fly popper, I decided that was not going to happen again.

Chasing Salmon in Vain

Well, I've been fly fishing so much, that I've injured my elbow. So I switched to primarily doing spinning, with the other hand. So far so good.

Last week I caught a largemouth bass that way, after work and before dinner:




Here's a video of it:

A couple weeks ago, Connecticut stocked a little more than 200 "excess broodstock" atlantic salmon to the Shetucket River. Because of a quirk in my schedule, I had a chance to stop there on the way home early today.

Salmon!

Last year, we were unsuccessful.

So far, same thing.

But it is beautiful and I caught two other fish in quick succession.

The first one was a heavy bluegill. It was super greedy and went after a "rapala" floating balsa swimming lure.
Video of the bluegill encounter:

I actually snagged it under the chin with a trailing hook. This is especially ironic because the unusual tackle arrangement is designated by the state, to make snagging salmon more difficult. If not a fly, you are limited to a single *swinging* hook and no added weights (but the lure can be heavy and sinking--no weight up the line--so no bobber either.)

Then I switched to a longer heavier similar lure in a different color, but with the swinging hook under the belly. I'm pretty sure this is also kosher but will follow up. I caught a young largemouth bass this way:

 

Unfortunately I threw it back, but caught nothing else for the next hour and a half, even after switching to flies and casting with my other hand. There were rises but nobody wanted my offerings.

The bass was the right size to eat. Darn.

The lure fishing was not easy to do well. I can cast further with my fly line by far!  I don't think I have the match between rod and lure down and I also don't have the right motion methinks. Or I am trying too hard. Sometimes it goes really far when I don't try.