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!