Trout fishing has been less frequent this year. But very good wild trout. But not many stocked trout. Mostly because I haven't fished for stocked trout much and the saltwater was too much fun through November.
Yesterday I needed to go trout fiishing, and the freshet had ended -- with the possibility that the fish got washed down and moved around so that te good pools--which had gone empty from fishing pressure -- might have fish again.
I also tied a new fly--well same as the black one but in red/black lite brite.
Hey, with one split shot it did the trick in 10 minutes.
I tie my own versions of two fly styles , what are commonly known as:
Clousers (designed by Bob Clouser)
Lefty's Deceivers (Designed by Lefty Kreh)
Mine are not tied the way they do it.
Mine are simpler and uglier and more durable.
They really aren't any different except for feathers--"deceivers" have feathers, clousers are really just bucktails.
A range of sizes all work, from #1 through 6/0. I even tie on jig hooks when I want a deep running bait imitation.
This is just a small selection. I tie them in many colors, with both lead eyes and without. All the actual flies in this particular pile caught fish this past season.
Probably my "signature" is the use of dubbing to make a body. Sometimes I palmer hackle instead. The biggest structural change over the clouser is I do not pull the bucktail over the eyes. That is a disaster. They always break there prematurely leaving an unsightly tuft that catches seaweed and loosens the eyes and the whole thing falls apart. If you tie the eyes on last, this does not happen.
Have you ever had one of those perfect fishing days? The kind of day where you don't think it can ever be better? That was Friday.
I had some business up in the north of the state that would be just brief in the morning. Of course I had to "blue line" some place interesting to fish on the way home. Somewhere not terribly out of the way, that I could fish for just 2 hours, someplace that is not stocked. (It was stocked privately until many decades ago). I'd only fished it briefly twice previously and only caught a couple minnows and a parr. For some reason, I was feeling very optimistic, which is usually a recipe for failure and yet, this time, it worked!
I walked the woods scoping downstream until I could find something especially attractive and then went a bit past it. I figured I'd "warm up" on the riffle running out of the particularly promising pool. I worked a small shrimpy fly I tied, and then switched to a blue lite-brite fuzzball that I tied identical to the little black "One Fly" in this case, on #16.
After working the riffle for another 15 minutes or something, I decided it was time to "move in" on the pool. It didn't take long. I made a pretty long cast and the leader got hung up in a bush. I tried to mend it out, that jiggled the fly and made it swim on the surface and BANG! A trout came up and took it! I brought that one in and it was simply beautiful. A young brook char, maybe two years old? Maybe even three? This is a small stream.
A wild brook char. A beautiful vibrant small fish, in a small Connecticut stream. It took the blue fuzzy fly--that's a first for that fly. I tied it on the black pattern to see what it might do. Well, it worked.
Now, that trout came out of only part of the pool. I was sure there were more in there. It is a very very good spot for fish and plenty of room for more to be in there with their own lies. I spent an entire hour working through my fly box. I tried surface (a rubberlegs) streamers (gray ghost and a little mini brown one I've had success with before), and the black fly as well as the blue one. Nothing.
Flies I tried over that hour:
I was sure a fish was in there, so I had this idea--what about a big
jig fly? It will get to the bottom. Maybe that's where I need to go. Do I
go white bucktail, or black feathers? I went with the latter. I let it stream downstream until it was the right length of line behind me for a lob going to the target at the whitewater. On that first lobcast, It landed, started moving with the current, I kept the line taught, and bump, bump, grab--fish on! Very exciting!:
What a fish! Beautiful and colorful. But the fly was big--as large as what I find is very successful at taking 5+ pound striped bass.
You can see the fly -- it's the lower one. The deceiver just above it is tied on a #1 and is my major producer for stripers. I also tie it in 2/0 and 3/0. But notice that I took a trout with the same size! This is a huge fly (by my conventional thinking) for trout But it worked! In this situation. The question of course is whether my narrative is at all useful.
If you've gone fishing and had one of these days, you know exactly what I am trying (and failing to say). It is an emotional thing. Impossible to describe.
If I were to have only one fly in my box, I think it would be my little black one. It works so many ways. And catches wild fish and stocked fish. It works in the Winter, the Fall, all year round. IT works on the surface, in the film, underwater. It works dead drifting at all depths, with or without weight, it works twitched. IT works skated, or as a little baitfish. It is very effective swung down and across as a classic wet fly.
I am afraid it is stifling my tying though because it is too easy!
Yesterday it found a hefty stocked rainbow. It found two more smaller trout as well--one was a brook trout. But those smaller fish got away.
I've tyed it from size 6 through 16. This one is a #12:
On the previous weekend, we went to a TMA and caught a small beautiful wild brown trout--on the little #16 version:
The upper fly (2-0 O'Shaughnessy) catches bass with that kind of sparseness. As the bucktail fibers get busted off, it just keeps taking fish. Took a 25 incher.
The lower fly is craft fir. It is nowhere near as successful overall but it has caught two striped bass and a hickory shad. It is a surface fly. I don't fish it as often though. It was *supposed* to be good in Florida but really wasn't.
I haven't written in quite a while and although I've caught a lot of striped bass in that period, I am going to start with a freshwater outing that was really a beautiful day, not because of the quantity or size of the fish, but because of the simple enjoyment of the day. A friend of mine who lives a long way away came for the weekend to learn the ways of fly fishing for trout. He is very experienced in Gulf Coast saltwater fishing and freshwater bass fishing, but he wanted to try one of our New England inland favorites.
As it turned out, before meeting up on Saturday night, he fished on his way down here on Saturday, using spinning equipment on some northwest CT streams, and he really hit pay dirt:
He caught this lovely brown trout right here:
And he continued fishing, and found a stocked rainbow as well as a number of really nice large minnows in some beautiful surroundings:
Saturday night we had pizza and on Sunday morning, I showed him the basics of fly casting. Then the roll cast. We went to a place I know holds wild trout, that is not stocked, and whad'ya know, he caught one in the first 20 minutes!
Classic take out of a plunge pool with a rubberlegs:
We then changed locations to another all wild stream that is managed by the DEEP. It was bueatiful, but I lost a fish and he saw but couldn't connect. The water was very slow and shallow. I had fished it before and knew where some deep pools were. I forgot to teach the bow and arrow cast. That was the go to on this stream:
It was a really fine day, a really fine weekend catching up, fishing, and playing music. It was much too short. What better way to cope with too much work, too little work, or a too
short visit, than to go catch some fish. So on October 15 I caught a
couple schooling striped bass. By this time the bass are very much on
the move along the shore, marauding the baitfish wherever they are, be
it up creeks or in tide, or around rocks.
By the weekend, I was very interested in trying to get in some more trout fishing. We started the day heading to the Farmington to chase big brown trout, but less than 5 minutes into the drive changed our minds for the Shetucket. That is also a pretty "big" river to me, and I have a hard time reading them. So far I've never caught a salmonid on the Shetucket after 10 tries or so, and only one on the Farmington after 3 or 4 tries.
After a couple hours on the big river, we relocated to a small stream I had only fished once but which is very promising. It produced. I moved a bigger trout but this perfect little brown trout parr made my day along with his rivermate, the minnow.The trout was where you'd expect: in a deep area next to an undercut bank with bubbles over it.
20 Oct, it was back to saltwater again. This produced two bluefish that we ate, and two striped bass that went back to their schools.
Then on the 22nd of October I caught a handsome bass about 25" and another two bluefish--one I kept, the other got away in my hands--he swam away even though I'd spiked his brain. Apparently they can swim while brain dead. I broke my own rule. Normally I leave the hook on until after I've bled them out. Then if they wiggle you might not lose the fish. A net would be a good idea, but I don't have a saltwater sized net.
I started at the crack of dawn.
First catch at 0913, at the reef 2 miles away. I took my time getting there. Tried bottom fishing to no avail. But then at the reef there was a blow up of birds--mostly small gulls actually (no herring or black backed).
Then a bluefish a few minutes later:
Then another striper and another bluefish, then this big one at 0938. The wind is already stronger than 20 minutes ago.
Wind came up:
Little diaper stripers on the two mile row home--four of them. I rowed directly along the beach to stay out of the outgoing wind. They were in that little spot where the baitfish try to hide.
It is worth noting that this last trip, the fly that did all the work was an extremely sparse black and white deceiver with some red thread and yellow eyes. They seem to hit it as much or more when there is almost nothing left of the bucktail. The baitfish were small peanut bunker (baby menhaden) which I think this fly imitated nicely. Note that the previous weeks, my blue/charteuse was effective. It may have been this time too, but I had spent some significant time trolling it on this last trip with nothing, and the black/white one produced.
Believe it or not when I got back to the beach, I went for a swim. Water down to about 60 or 62. Somewhere in there. Got that instant brain freeze business like when you eat ice cream too fast. The goal is always to swim every month. Not usually successful but if I can make November at least I can say that.
