In a few weeks, these guys will be heading up the tribs and channels to do their thing. Right now, however, they are on the hunt; looking for protein.
This year has been a little weird. Usually, August has been a great time for big bugs and big browns. This year, the trico hatches have been ridiculous and fish are all over on them. It makes for great fishing but we've been spending so much time fishing to rising fish and nymphing the scum that we haven't really gone after the slabs. When we have, it hasn't really materialized so we go back to what works and it really has worked.
Well, the weather changed this last week and so, too did the bugs. As the nights get colder and longer, tricos wane and pseudos emerge. Pseudos suck unless there is nasty weather. When fish get on them, it's hard to get them to look at anything else except a size 24 dun or spinner and to be honest, I don't even carry them in my box.
The flip side of that though, is there is other food in the water that the bruisers will eat and they are hungry--big scuds in the grass for one. And even if you get a small percentage of opportunistic browns like this, that can make for a pretty damn good day.
If you've gotten to this point in the story, it means you're actually interested in learning and you're not just about the grip and grin so I'm going to throw you a bone. We were fishing some dries and had some success but you could tell these fish were getting hammered and much pickier than usual. We went to the nymph rigs and did fine. It wasn't epic but good enough in between the honey holes. And when you got to the scum, the fishing was what it usually is--doubles and even triples. You could tell as soon as your flies entered the seam without drag and clean from grass, it was going to get eaten.
The wind started blowing from the south so it made the row-around deal much harder. We decided to take a break and eat lunch in a little cove protected by the wind. As we were sitting there I noticed something that could turn a good day into an epic one. Crayfish.
Yeah, I know. Me recognizing crayfish in the water and figuring out that fish eat them is nothing new and it's not some kind of huge revelation. We've been throwing crayfish patterns for years. The thing is though, is that the crayfish thing worked for a while this year and then like a faucet being turned off, fish just stopped eating them so we had to go small and fish the scum and although you get a lot of opportunities, you also lose a lot of fish in the weeds. The other problem with that, is unless you could throw dries in between the big scum lines, you might go for a while with no action on the nymphs. You might as well just row from one scumline to the next because the in between spots just weren't producing. Well, the crayfish changes all of that.
When I say crayfish I need to qualify something. These weren't the big suckers you see dead on in the rocks. We were seeing the little guys. The soft ones. They were molting and trout absolutely love molting crayfish. So we switched to the P-daddy Cray and let me tell you, the first cast along the bank and a little bit of a mend to jiggle the cray and an ambitious 16 inch rainbow absolutely annihilated it.
We fished down and crushed fish after fish and then the bruisers came out...the fish in the photo caught by Mark Rehbein, is one of only a few I've seen like that this year. That's exciting because it means we are taking the turn from the summer heat and even though I hate pseudos, I do love hoppers, ants and crays and so do these big 'ole browns.
If you want to learn how to tie an easy crayfish pattern check out the video:
Fun times ahead folks. I'm definitely looking forward to it.
Keep 'em where they live...
No comments:
Post a Comment