Day off. Chose to fish the am hours, lower air temps with a trade for lower winds. It seems typical as of late that when the opportunity to fish arises the weather turns sour. If you don’t go you won’t know. I’ve been eyeballing some new water for a while now, I hit it the day before and landed a beauty. I figured with dry flies likely out of the picture due to low airtemps I’d go searching deep dark ugly spots for anything that would take a fly. I was onstream at ~8:30am with an airtemp approaching 40°F. With a bit of stain from the night before the creek was looking good. Just a bit of stain would allow me to get in a bit closer, something I’ve come to take advantage of. I pulled three flies from my box and stuck them in my chest pack, all #6 SMB’s the Black, Brown and Olive, the deadly trio. One decent sized split shot and I was swinging at every nasty looking snaggy spot I could effectively cast to, passed up quite a bit of water but when I knew I could land the cast I put my flies in the creek.

In the past I’ve passed opportunities like this over. Larger, faster, deeper water. Searching water. I passed on it in the past because a guy can spend all day searching for fish and get nowhere fast. With that said it there are ways to fish these types of spots that can make it more productive. 1st, lose your fear of loosing your flies. No guts…NO GLORY. Don’t be stupid and loose fifty flies but if you haven’t hit bottom or gotten snagged then your missing opportunities. Concentrate on getting your flies down, deep. This means mending, fishing upstream and adding more weight, again if your not setting the hook on a rock or debris every so often your probably missing the larger fish hanging out. 2nd. Try, try, and try again, then move on. You can waste a day dead drifting a fat streamer through deep ass pools, it’s good to try and as long as your confident that your fly is getting down you can be alright walking away from the darkness of that 8ft deep plunge pool.  I’m still learning but today proved that I’m getting the hang of it, lost one fly and landed a handful of freaking nice fish.

Back to the morning, landed the first 13in brown and moved on. Took my time as I was in no hurry and enjoyed my coffee staring down at snaggy water, deciphering it, watching the currents. You can use the stream to your advantage by sinking your flies in a spot where the current naturally kicks them down to the bottom, the trick is recognizing those spots and sinking the cast, like the swish from a basketball. Nothing but net. Speaking of nets, I know they are a pain and I’ve been known to leave mine at home but if your fishing a #6 anything and not carrying a net your doing yourself and the trout a dis-service. Along with the net downsize that tippet. 3x is what I fish when chucking streamers as of late and damn am I glad I do, these two things can get big fish in and fast allowing you to release them quickly. Point in case, snaggy water with undercuts, tree limbs and fat fish. I sent my SMB through a handful of times with no results. I kept at it, I hadn’t gotten snagged on the bottom. A moment later my light went taught. When bigger fish hit and run for cover you’d better be prepared to lay into them, bend your rod and hang on. Both of the nicer fish from today took the #6 Brown SMB and immediately dove for cover under flood debris, great habitat and a great way to lose a fish. Make a choice, lay into that fish, turn it’s head and get it to the net or give it enough slack to hang you. I learned that today, never have I had to put so much force into my rod to keep a fish from wrapping itself around debris.

Both the nicer fish came from water that was about 4ft deep with debris or a cut bank for cover. After landing the female brown my heart was pounding and I was smiling as I was sinking a foot deep in muck. I had to jump in to make sure she didn’t get to the downed trees. Less than an hour into my morning and I had what I came for, adrenaline. I sat on the bank and drank coffee for a few minutes before pressing on, now the day could be spent leisurely tossing flies confident that the big fish of the day had shown it’s face. 

I pulled a 14inch brown with some excellent spotting from a deep 4ft run and thinking there may be a second fish to be had I tried one more time. As I was lifting my rod during the the tail out, a flash and splash. Something big smashed my fly less than an inch from the surface and I nearly fell on my ass, no joke. This fish and I danced for a couple heart pumping minutes, he dove for a tree branch and I moved to pull his head as hard as I could. Remember the net, this fish would not have given up its portrait without it. Less than twenty minutes apart and I landed back to back nice sized browns. I spent the rest of the day doing much the same, deep drifting my SMB. I landed a handful more with nothing less than 13inches, in this kind of water they are fewer but they are bigger. I took off at 12pm, right as the wind picked up and the rain started falling. If you don’t go, you won’t know. Glad I went out today.

Slide Show

From Caddisflies by G. LaFontaine pg. 315.  ”Nearly every mention in modern angling literature of adult caddisflies includes the solemn advice “Always catch one because caddisflies appear lighter in flight than they actually are.” The most common reason caddisflies appear lighter in the air than they do in the hand is that the wings of most species are fairly translucent, and they allow a lot of sunlight to pass through them. When an angler holds an adult in his hand and looks down at it, the light does not affect the coloration. Maybe someone finds it valuable to view adults this way, but it has been my experience that it is difficult to get wild trout to take caddisflies from my hand. They usually suck adults off the surface, looking up at them, which is roughly the same way fly fisherman see them in the air… Even the way fly fishermen look at an insect is warped by the “mayfly” obsession. It is fine to study a mayfly in the hand because the wings are upright, but certainly a caddisfly, with two sets of wings over the body, must be looked at against the natural background of the sky for a fish-eye view; and a matching artificial should be chosen the same way.”

Additional Thoughts:

• Could the thickness of the Elk hair wing contribute or detract from the effectiveness of the pattern both in terms of color, a thicker wing would block more light which would make the color appear darker? Whereas a sparsely tied wing is more translucent creating similar conditions to what LaFontaine describes above? I remember an outing with Wendy B. fishing the hatch I am attempting to imitate here and the sparse No Hackle Elk hair Caddis pattern was crushing fish. The sparser the wing became, the more fish took to it, even sitting half in the film.
• The #16 Two-Toned Chubby No Hackle Elk Hair pattern is an attempt at better imitating the caddis I have been seeing as of late by imitating the olive/black body I had documented previously as well as the bulbous body shape.
•  The Olive CDC & Elk, we’ll see how effective this version is for the spring caddis hatches. I have my hopes but I think the Olive maybe too much. Also, it’s hard to get the bulbous body appearance by palmering a CDC feather.

Slide Show

The day of the official opener I fished a creek that put up fewer but perhaps larger trout. This day was not about large fish, it was simply a trip to my favorite isle of the super market. I expected to find at least one other angler hanging out tempting their dinner as well but to my surprise I had the creek to myself. I even waited until the best part of the day with regards to the weather. I rolled up just before 1pm, geared up and made a short hike downstream. I enjoyed the sun, tried to avoid making any casts during the wind gusts and slowly fished each dark looking spot along the creek. I picked this particular creek because it offers a large quantity of smaller to medium sized brown trout. I only took fish that taped between 10 and 11 inches, everything else above and below went back to the stream. I fished a two fly rig consisting of a #8 Black Hairball and a trailing #16 Black Thin Nymph, both consistently took trout at a 1:1 ratio. I harvested three fish and then began to get a bit more picky for the last two. Just a reminder here, in S.E. Minnesota once you have knocked that fifth trout you are no longer allowed to wet a line, you have to be finished. I fished upstream noticing the occasional mayfly here and there but no rising trout, some smaller #18 Baetis were coming off and a couple larger #14 Hendricksons were emerging as well. I saw two, literally two caddisflies over the course of the afternoon. I tried a #14 Dark Hendrickson pattern despite the lack of rising trout and managed one five inch brown, shortly after I went back to the Hairball/Thin Nymph rig.

I fished until it was getting close to dinner time then sat on a single run and took the last two fish I needed to round out my limit. Responsible harvest is what I practice. That may mean different things to different people and that is fine as long as you can sleep at night. I’m proud to bring home food, especially when I know the amount of resources involved just getting me to the creek. I harvest Brown trout ranging from 10-11inches when they are in abundance and I plan to have fish for dinner. Fresh fish… so fresh I just took it from the creek. Rainbows are fair game as they do not reproduce naturally here in any abundance and are stocked for the purpose of maintaining a put and take fishery. I spare the brookies no matter the size, they are just too cool and too few for me to harvest them, I can easily find browns I would rather eat. Not every location is going to meet my requirements for harvest which is why I take note of locations that perhaps put up larger numbers of smaller trout and choose those locations for harvest, to thin the herd a bit to allow some to grow larger. My rules for harvest are just that, my rules for me, they work for me and I can enjoy the act without any ethical issues. Each one of these trout were grilled and served for dinner that evening, they tasted great and nothing went to waste, in fact even the remnants will feed my pine trees over the next few weeks.

Slide Show

Found a stream with a couple buddies, managed a handful of fish casting the Sprinkle Me Baby into the wind. Cold and crappy out today, think to last year this time… Fished only a couple hours but enjoyed every minute of it, basically alone on the opener, the stream to ourselves we split up and each picked a couple of spots to try. The wind and roll casts. I got lucky and landed this fish, despite the option to harvest, this beauty went back to the creek un-harmed.

Snuck in a couple more hours on the creek, again looking for Caddis to assess. This particular creek put off the first boil hatch I had ever seen, if you were driving by you’d swear the water was boiling with the number of rise forms occuring. Today a handful of caddis could be found here and there bringing a fish or two to the surface every so often. In the past I would have likely ignored those couple rises and just stuck a nymph on. I just didn’t want to fish a nymph, I wanted the rise and I didn’t care if it was going to be from a 4inch trout, of which I did land a couple. Each run that I witnessed atleast one rise occur while observing I opted to fish first with the #16 EHC (I’m working the pattern specifics out, more later.) Enevitably every spot I chose to put the EHC on first I landed a handful or more with the dry fly. This is a confidence booster, presentation. I fished a couple deeper spots with the #8 Black Hairball and basically spent most of the day looking around and enjoying the sun then split when rain came. I found a few larger stoneflies along with a bunch of wildflowers, the first I’ve seen this year. The largest fish to surface for the EHC was a 13in brown looking healthy, the #8 Hairball took one 14inch brown and a handful of smaller ones. So the important thing here…learn where/when a hatch has the potential to occur and follow it. My bet is that if you pick it right you can fish this particular hatch for a month maybe longer. It is in it’s infancy on this creek, over the next week or so it will ramp up and knowing what I know now, next year I should be able to fish dry flies for a solid month bouncing from creek to creek.

Slide Show

After my recent Sunday outing that saw a massive caddis hatch, a discussion with other knowledgeable anglers in our area has lead me to believe that what I have referred to as the “Gray Caddis” hatch was incorrect. I’ve been fishing a different hatch. That’s not to say I was completely wrong, the Gray Caddis hatches during this same period and perhaps some of the hatches in the past included the Gray Caddis (i.e. two or more hatches were overlapping). There is some debate as to what specie I was witnessing come off but what is not debatable is that it’s the same specie I’ve been running into for the last couple years. I didn’t stop to pick up adults when they were hatching in force on Sunday, that was a rookie mistake I won’t make again. With that said my curiosity had to be satisfied so I went searching for more of those same caddis hoping I could find a few hatching to gather more information for the weeks to come. Along the way I managed a handful of Browns on a #8 Black Hairball and in between I did toss a #16 EHC for fun…I love rising trout and rise they did, even with minimal hatching adults the EHC took fish after fish, crushed upon subtle impact.

General Notes/Observations:

• Two Sizes of Caddis Adults found: #16 and a #18 (Referring to Body Length).
• The #16 Showed a Lighter Colored Wing w/Olive & Black Abdomen/Body.
• The #18 Showed a Darker Colored Wing w/a Mostly Black body with a spot of Olive.
• The #16 and #18 were found mating so I’ve got to think they are the male/female of the specie.
• Legs on Both were Black changing to Cream or Tan at the end of the legs.
• There were more of the #16′s around than the #18′s by 2:1 easy.
• A Search of the substrate and riffles showed a majority of the tubular cased shells were sealed for the beginning of the pupating process. I am not sure if this is the larval form for this adult or not but it was the only larval form pupating that I found in quantities that would support this hatch.
• Catching Caddisflies and documenting them with a camera even under good lighting conditions is difficult, especially when your searching for the few that are around. Also, remember that a photo taken doesn’t necessarily represent the colors of the natural 100% all of the time, lighting plays a huge role in what you take home with you and reference later.
• Note the width of the body on the #16, something to think about, maybe break out of that perfectly Mayfly tapered body mold for a change, after all isn’t it size, shape, then color? Size and shape of these bodies are not consistent with the standard Mayfly.

Slide Show

I woke at 5am, assessed the estimated rainfall totals for the night before and made coffee. I wasn’t in a hurry, thought I might find chocolate milk and not in the fridge if you know what I mean. I drove by my initial location but the creek was up and blown, un-fishable. I made a decision at that moment to burn more time to the road but perhaps spend less time driving from creek to creek to maybe get lucky and find one fishable spot, instead I drove to the safe bet, to gin-clear water. By ~9am the air temp was above 60°F and would be pushing a predicted 80°F for a high later, first time this year I’ve wet waded. The first hour saw a mixed bag of random rises, likely to emerging Beatis or midge that had been hatching prior to my arrival. A handful of caddis were around but no steadily rising trout so I opted for a #8 Brown SMB, I missed two then landed a nicer 16inch brown that jumped more than any fish this season. I pushed on but dropped the SMB, some would have hit it but I would have been force feeding it, the trout didn’t want it, too big…they had smaller fare in large quantities coming. I’m glad I switched up when I did. Slapped on a #16 Olive Thin Nymph and took a handful of nice looking healthy browns.

By 10am it was clear the caddis were coming. The signature rise for pupa was beginning to occur in larger quantities, smaller trout could be seen airing out in the sun as they did back flips grabbing caddis pupa on the way out of the creek. Honestly, I wasn’t prepared for this. I was expecting Beatis and rifling through my dry fly box it dawned on me that I hadn’t thought to load the box with more Grey Caddis dries after last year… I only had two #18 Grey Caddis dry flies with me and the fish were already beginning to rise in rhythm. A bit of 5x tippet with one of two flies and I got to work on a single run that I landed ~10 trout from before the rising calmed and I swapped back to the #16 Olive Thin Nymph, took a handful more from the same run then waited and sure enough the hatch kicked in again, Grey Caddis ranging from some close to #20 to the larger #16. I fished faster broken water and took a bunch under 12inches with a couple over.

By 12:30pm the hatch was so thick that the fish almost shut down, it became difficult to discern my imitation from the rest so I stopped and watched the event unfold in front of me. A splash loud enough to be heard over the riffle I was standing closer to drew my attention upstream to a longer slow section of creek, larger fish were surfacing. With the slower water and the amount of bugs I opted to add a couple feet to my leader in an effort to fool those fish that would be more critical in the slower water. Longer casts standing in the middle of the creek were required. For close to an hour I stood on the same rock past my knees in cold trout water casting to each fish that showed its face. I missed a handful but smooth casting over 60ft allowed me to take several of the larger fish over 13inches with one over 14. Setting the hook from 50ft out and fighting those fish in…I’ve been waiting for this. My time frame dictated I leave by 1pm but the bugs, the trout, they dictated I stay just a little longer. I landed a couple more and took off almost thirty minutes late. I was later forgiven by the lady of the house, this video explained my reasoning and she was forgiving.

Slide Show

I was informed last evening that a friend of mine and fellow trout angler was injured while working and had to have surgery on his leg involving a bone plate. It’s the beginning of the trout season, beginning of the summer and he will be sidelined for a good portion of the next few months. This one’s for him and his family, to a quick recovery man we’ll be on the water soon.

Slide Show

Used this test subject to search some larger, deeper, uglier looking water.

It took a Tiger Trout… My first ever, awesome!

Then it took something a bit larger…19 1/2inches to be exact.

It was lost to a snag…then the #6 Brown SMB saved the day…18 1/2 inches.

Needless to say this was a very good afternoon. Got ran almost to my backing (a rarity around here), landed two of the largest trout I’ve managed this season, didn’t lose a single fish or hookset for that matter, caught a tiger trout, (wow) all in the span of a couple hours. I apologize for the crappy photo edit but it had to be done if not for me for the innocent fish that live here. I spent little time taking pictures of these trout (thus the reason for the crappy edit) as I wanted them back in the creek and quickly, both were hard fighters, a seriously heart racing excellent time, they both kicked water in my face as they left my hands. Looks like I should go searching a bit more, maybe tweek my proto-type and get a few more tied up. I love this sh*t….