I wanted to take a few casts after work yesterday and I was just too lazy to drive a long distance. So, I decided to check out a river that is close to my house. It is a gorgeous river. Crystal clear and holds some nice Trout and Salmon. One of the drawbacks is that it can get fished heavily. The other drawback is that if its NOT being fished heavily, that means there are no fish. Well, that’s where this story begins. See, alot of flyfishermen will show up to this river and if they don’t see big brookies swimming in the obvious holes they assume that there are a lack of fish. I was tempted to do the same yesterday. I started in the obvious holes and saw nothing. Then I moved up river, nymphing every little run. Zero. Everything looked perfect, but no fish. Then I show up to a nice little run that has a small waterfall at the top. I cast upstream into the white water, let my fly drift down and as soon as that fly start to swing, WHAM! A nice salmon. Second cast, same exact thing. Then, Sean moves into my slot and I move downstream. I can see Salmon all along the bottom in the mid section of the run and brookies are feeding on the surface in the back of the run. I start catching brookies on the surface with a wet fly. A little trick I do, is put floatant on my wet fly. So, it immitates an emerger and stays just beneath the film. I strip it in, ever so slowly and it works very well. Try it sometime. So, I catch a few Brookies and then make my way back to Sean. Just as I get to him, WHAM! He hooks into a nice Salmon. He releases it and on the very next cast, WHAM! Another Salmon! Sean went home and I tried some other sections of the river. Then when I made my way back to where we had been catching the fish there was another flyfisherman in the spot. He was catching Nothing! He was casting over all the fish. The fish were at his feat and he was casting to the other side of the river. So the moral of the story is, MOVE. Try every little section fo the river until you find the fish. If you don’t find the fish, try another River.
As I learn more about Shawmut, my home trout water, I value knowing where the fish will very likely be on any given day. 24-7, 365. My trying to know a small stretch of river REALLY intimately has taught me so much more about fish behavior in many OTHER rivers. With Shawmut being so close to my home, with me, it’s kind of a stewardship- river keeper thing, left over from ago, trying to be just another ‘watcher of the home waters’. Sometimes I don’t even fish, I just check on the water to see what’s going on. This learning philosophy has, and is, saving me from the dreaded,……..Jerry “Fish Persuit Ventures To No Avail” There’s so much more to fishing than just catching fish, don’t you think? (Like eliminating one’s “Casting to No Avail”) Just one day, I’d like to simply go to the river, hook on the right fly, see my fish, make one cast, land my target fish, release him, and go. What would you do if you could only make one cast? Well, the guy who was walking on the fish in your story, I’ve done that too!
tight lines