salvelinusfontinalis
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- Sep 9, 2006
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Part 1: Taking what the defense gives you (in the spirit of playoff time)
Now, we discussed picking your battles. Know your strengths and weakness and remember, every situation is unique when on these streams.
Lets breakdown just a small list of uncontrollable events that change the way these streams fish and how you approach them.
Sunlight, weather, time of year, time of day, fishing pressure, difficult in the trouts lies, keyed in fish, your human factor , the speed of that the earth spins or just how hard you sneezed and slipped while standing in the water. These are things you can not control. You fish when you can and that means sometimes great conditions and other times poor conditions. How you adjust to these uncontrollable events will ultimately determine how successful you are on the stream.
A few examples of things you can control is how you approach the stream bank, how low and slow you move or fly selection. Yes fly selection. No one really thinks about how your choice of flies will make or break you in certain situations.
There has been to much spirited discussion on this board about if trout have intelligence or not. I like to pretend they do and in a “way” they do. It is said a goldfish, has a 3 second memory but every species on this plant has evolved to has strengths and weakness. Gold fish may have a 3 second memory, but they also don't bang into the other side of the tank “trying” to flee when I enter the room. Trout have evolved into elusive and “shy” fish. The only 3 “jobs” of their biological make up and senses do is: reproduce, hunt like a predator and spot you (a predator). That is it. Brook Trout have some of the best over head vision of any fish. The eyes are higher on the head and make it nearly impossible to sneak up on one. Their mouths open to great diameters to swallow the large prey they so opportunistically attacked. The lateral line feels the smallest disturbance.......from you and prey. The thing is trout condition more “rapidly” than lets say bass. Bass see you and you can still catch them. They are aggressive meat eating fish and you twitch an easy meal at them and they cant help themselves. Nature has not given bass the level of rapid conditioning as a trout. Trout see you and “run away” for the most part and hide. Pressured fish get “used” to you “very quickly”, even to the point “rejecting” your particular flies after multi--day trips. While this is not “brains”.........its conditioning..........trout are far more “advanced” quarry than many freshwater game fish when it come to fishing for the “sport of the prey”. Therefore......they are "smarter". They are “determined” to avoid you at “all costs”. They “hate” you. I had to quote so many times lets just agree......trout are smart ;-) So now we have an intelligent, highly honed in to its surroundings zen like fish sitting in the absolute worst conditions for you to catch him. The perfect enviroment. A crystal clear spring creek. The last post pcray mentioned I pick difficult situations and I am good at winning them. He is right and he gave an approach in rebuttal that is effective also. . I still believe, no I know, that more impossible situations exist on spring creeks for an angler than battles you can win. Even if your the Wilt “The Stilt” of high gradient brookies streams. You still wont win more battles than the Letort has conundrums. That is why I seek to break the ever changing little puzzles these streams make. So much feels uncharted and new.
What does this have to do with fly selection? Ill tell you.
Everyone always says fly selection is not as important as presentation. I agree. The wrong pattern presented properly will always trump the right pattern presented poorly. However, how you present your flies.....has everything to do with fly selection.
You can pound cress with streamers and catch fish but if you want to do yourself a big favor on spring creeks, learn to midge and nymph properly. For god sakes, learn to midge. Remember the speed of the earth rotating and your loud sneeze have the fish in a funk. Imagine what your heavy flies and weights do to the serenity of that mirrored waters surface. Imagine what those big eyes with incredible vision in that gin clear water see. Ill tell you. Shadows on the stream bed from your fly hitting the water. They see your weights. They maybe even feel it in their lateral line.
Midges are light, small so the get inspected less, they land softly......they create little ruckus when tossed into tricky currents. Everything biologically that these fish have evolved into and been conditioned to do.....midges are off the radar. The only bleep on the radar made by midges to these fish is that they are abundant and subtle. IMO many people don't like to fish midges either and therefore the fish are even more conditioned to eat them on heavily pressured streams. I do believe this so lets leave an impression
Little white fluff, bright red, Peacock or even over sized, these flies catch the attention of the fish but have that subtle comfort the trout in spring creeks love. Quiet.I was tossing sculpins, but I changed my approach and went with cress bugs and red midge larva. I threw black midges in a size 24 and caught some small rising fish. Still Cress Bugs and Red Midge Larva produced the most fish, mostly smaller fish and a few brutes. Even in that bright, bright sunlight.
Take what the defense gives you and learn to fish midges more.
I know I'm telling you this but showing you mostly pics with huge flies in their mouths but I hooked a lot and have caught a lot of fish on midges over the years and this past weekend.. Size 6 Sculpins don't let go as easy.
