m&M: - Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission

There are times, of course, when trout can be selective
0
an extreme. I remember a week on the First Fork
«6H the trout were rising to the female Beaverkill and
Quid have nothing to do with any fly that did not have
yellow egg sac. We rose to the occasion by wrapping
turn of yellow yarn around our flies and took them on
Va
rious patterns.
kome other examples that come to mind are when the
ayfly Drake is on the water, or when the trout are feed-
§ on midges, flying ants, and tiny naturals. Then it
a e
* s finesse to fool them. You either match up or you
j^ to concoct a change-of-pace offering that will lure
eiJ
i away from the naturals.
One evening we were fishing a long, flat pool on Bald
f- a gle Creek. Three trout were rising steadily along the
, r bank, and from the way they rolled on the surface
e
y looked like sizable fish. We couldn't see what they
ere
rising to, so we tried various patterns, all without
c
cess. Finally I waded across the stream and observed
at
junebugs were tumbling off the overhanging bank
n
o drifting downstream.
Returning to my original position, I waited until the
trout
resumed rising. Since I had nothing that even
guely resembled a junebug, I had no choice but to try
c
nange-of-pace" fly. 1 decided on a big grizzly bivisible
a No. 6 hook. On my first cast a trout smashed the
y> and after a five minute struggle I managed to slide
J« into the net. He was a brownie, 19 inches long, and
en I CU(. JJJJJJ 0pen ne was so fuu 0f junebugs it was
Possible to see how he could have found room for an-
0t
her morsel.
^hange-of-pace" flies can also be successful when
1* are rising to midges—at least, early in the rise. After
y settle down to a steady diet of midges you must go
No. 20 or No. 22 drys on 6X, or else to the wet midge,
ich is simply a No. 18 hook with a body wrapping of
b,at
* thread.
n
many cases, when satisfied that I am matched up
* lr y well, and am still unable to take fish, I look to the
oer as the source of the trouble. The instinctive reac-
., a t such times is to go to finer terminal tackle, but
may cause more problems than it solves.
n
e morning on Slate Run in Lycoming County I
^ ar ted out with a No. 16 Adams on a 5X tippet and had
O-ifficulty in picking up trout. As the morning wore
Q ne fish continued to rise, but they grew more wary.
the first cast they would start for the fly, eye it sus-
°usly; and turn away. Subsequent casts were ignored.
,'nally I made a short cast and observed the fly closely
in t ^fted downstream. The last two feet of leader,
e
ad of laying straight, lay in an S shape. I replaced
onl Wit ^ a as
^ tippet, and the heavier tippet was not
tr y straight but gave me better control of the fly. The
t seemed to agree with me that it was the right
v,,
a general rule, I go with the heaviest tippet that
take trout, and I try to present the fly in such a way
, ° expose as little of the leader as possible. I do not
/"! that the leader sink unless the trout insist othera
« .' w hich is not too often. When they do I resort to
ikum" concocted of Lava soap and glycerine.
APR 1L-1965
This past summer I spent a weekend on Salmon Creek
in Forest County. This is a really beautiful stream, full
of vari-colored stones and pebbles, but it is not always as
productive as appearances might indicate. I had fished
the stream earlier in the season without much luck, but
between visits a large run of trout had entered from
Tionesta Creek, evidently seeking cooler water, and had
worked their way upstream.
The water was so low and clear as to make fishing conditions
nearly impossible. Only by going with a 15-foot
leader and making extremely long casts was I able to
fish without spooking the trout. Even then I was getting
very few rises. What trout I did manage to catch came
from the riffles and broken water, whereas the largest fish
were concentrated in the clear pools.
Ahead of me the stream bounced around a bend, swept
alongside a rocky embankment, and spread into a long,
deep pool. Standing in the shallows at the tail of this pool,
I dropped my fly over several rising trout, but succeeded
only in putting them down. Finally I made a short cast
to examine the fly. It drifted back to me in the middle of
a greasy ring created by the fly oil.
Snipping off the fly, I tied on another, this time using
no fly oil. A trout nailed in on the first cast, and I took
two more before the fly became so waterlogged it refused
to float. I continued to fish without dressing the
flies, replacing them as they got soaked, and had a highly
successful evening's fishing.
All of these experiences are typical of the problems
that may confront an angler in the course of a season's
fishing. I wish there were "pat" answers for every problem,
but in trout fishing there are so many variables that
it is impossible to come up with any fixed set of solutions.
The best idea, I've found, is to stay flexible in your
thinking and in your approach, and don't waste much time
on practices that fail to catch fish, no matter how well
they may have worked in the past. Above all, don't automatically
assume that you're using the wrong fly pattern
just because you aren't catching fish. There are too many
other things that may be wrong.
When I was in my teens I used to do a lot of fishing
on the Raystown Branch out of the Juniata, especially on
the Breastwork stretch above New Baltimore. The brook
had a stronger flow of water than it does today, and it
contained plenty of native brookies.
One afternoon the brookies were flip-flopping all over
the stream, and I was going through my meager collection
of flies, trying to come up with the right pattern. I
was so absorbed that I failed to see the elderly gentleman
watching me until he spoke up.
"Maybe it ain't the fly, sonny," he said. "Maybe it's
the fisherman that's not just right!'
Truer words were never spoken.
^J*S*"
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