FISH LIKE FAST WATER
It seems to me that no matter where I go or what species I’m fishing for; trout like fast water. It dawned on me during my last adventure while fly fishing for bull trout in Alberta, Canada. The faster the water I cast my fly into, the more and more fish I was catching.
It all started early in the winter before spring of 2018 when I forced myself to further my education in nymphing. You see, living in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, you’re coerced, persuaded and even peer pressured into the romantic idea of a trout sipping your dry fly from the fragile surface tension of an idyllic Catskill river. I envisioned myself alongside John Burroughs casting dries to eager fish during the golden days of Catskill trout fishing. Although there’s one simple problem, I live in the northeastern Catskills bordering the Hudson Valley. Besides a few brook trout laden tributaries, I live nowhere near the dry fly friendly waters of the western Catskills like the famed Beaverkill, the Willowemoc, and the West Branch of the Delaware. I’m forced to fish the dirty, silt strewn waters of the very temperamental Esopus Creek. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve fooled many a rainbow and brown casting dries on the mighty E but the fish are weary and usually only the young and feeble minded come to the surface. You see the Esopus, even at its headwaters, is almost always stained. So with much reluctance, I decided to dedicate many of my winter nights tying nymphs, a whole lot of nymphs.
I figured investing so much time tying nymph after nymph would help me stay interested in nymphing even though I was sure I would cringe with every boring cast come spring. I thought of it like making a bet on a sports game I didn’t care much to watch just to make the game more fun. As I tied more and more variations, it lead me down a road I was unfamiliar with, euro nymphing and tight line nymphing. I watched every suggested YouTube video detailing the techniques involved. What struck me as odd, was that all of the water in the videos (mainly filmed out west, or in Europe) looked eerily similar to my home water of the Esopus. With its churning rapids and its boulder fields filled with racing water, I could envision just how effective this technique could be. Now, I was expecting to catch fish but what I wasn’t prepared for was the quality of salmonids I was bringing to the net. What further peaked my curiosity was just how fast the water the fish were holding in. I mean fast, white, gushing molecules crashing with such force as to be decimated back to its simplest forms of its boring origins of hydrogen and oxygen. Those daring swimmers would nose themselves to the very brink of that frothing explosion just waiting for my overweighted nymph to drift by.
This foray into the world of nymphing in fast water started to change the way I looked at water everywhere. A few weeks before I ventured to Alberta I took a trip to the Rangeley Region of Maine catching my personal best brook trout. For all you Maine brookie snobs, it was not on a dry fly on the Rapid River. It was caught while tight lining a Frenchie just feet from shore in a small eddie sandwiched between surging white water swirls. I started applying this technique everywhere, not just with nymphs, because this trick seemed to work just as well with streamers.
Fishing in the Rocky Mountains can ruin an East Coast anglers idea of good fishing. By ruin, I mean to make you wish you never had to return home. Don’t get me wrong, I love fishing in the Northeast and I love the awesome group of anglers I call my friends, but fishing for bull trout in Alberta amazed me. It was like taking every angry and aggressive strike I’ve experienced from a pike and stuffed it into one of my beautiful catskill native brook trout. Holy hell are those fish aggressive, especially if you know where to cast to them. I’d like to say that the fishing was easy, but damn did it start slow. I caught one lucky bull our first day, held right tight up against a plunging run in one of Alberta’s many deep canyon carving rivers. You see everything my friend Drew and I read concerning fly fishing for bull trout was that they liked to hold at the very bottom of the river’s deepest pools. So we went on a mission looking for ideal bull trout water, driving endlessly to find these “plunge pools” to cast overweighted rigs to the submerged freshwater sharks. We went the next two days without even a single sighting of these lurking lunkers. It wasn’t until our fourth day we stumbled upon a vague and outdated posted park map that showed a series of rapids and a waterfall nearby. As we made our way down into another unsuspecting canyon, our fortune changed. While fishing our way up the canyon, I started thinking about where that first bull trout was holding. It wasn’t holding in deep water at all, rather it was sitting in an unsuspecting eddy in a foot of water, right next to the plunge of fast water. I thought to myself, “Duh you idiot, stop fishing deep and throw your obnoxious streamer in the mess of traffic”. I made my first cast directly into a string of rapids, which was really more like a long strand of short waterfalls, and my eyes were stupefied. To my surprise, a long familiar figure burst from the white froth, unconcerned with its well being, it catapulted itself completely out of the water in pursuit of my streamer. Just like that, we had our recipe for success. We continued focusing all of our casts to crashing white water swirls at the edges of rapid and waterfalls with great success.
I urge you (if you haven’t already) to put down your favorite dry fly rig, grab yourself a heavy nymph or streamer and fish the seam that’s dangerously close to fast water. There’s a reason fishing with large weighted streamers and euro nymphing have garnered so much attention in the fly fishing community; because it works. Don’t be like that pretentious old timer in the back of the fly shop who scoffs at your oversized rod dangling with ostentatious meat. He’s just afraid of what he doesn’t understand. Styles change, flies change, and times change. Just make sure you praise the traditions without closing your mind to new techniques. Good luck and wade safe in that fast water!
AUTHOR
FISH LIKE FAST WATER
It seems to me that no matter where I go or what species I’m fishing for; trout like fast water. It dawned on me during my last adventure while fly fishing for bull trout in Alberta, Canada. The faster the water I cast my fly into, the more and more fish I was catching.
It all started early in the winter before spring of 2018 when I forced myself to further my education in nymphing. You see, living in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, you’re coerced, persuaded and even peer pressured into the romantic idea of a trout sipping your dry fly from the fragile surface tension of an idyllic Catskill river. I envisioned myself alongside John Burroughs casting dries to eager fish during the golden days of Catskill trout fishing. Although there’s one simple problem, I live in the northeastern Catskills bordering the Hudson Valley. Besides a few brook trout laden tributaries, I live nowhere near the dry fly friendly waters of the western Catskills like the famed Beaverkill, the Willowemoc, and the West Branch of the Delaware. I’m forced to fish the dirty, silt strewn waters of the very temperamental Esopus Creek. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve fooled many a rainbow and brown casting dries on the mighty E but the fish are weary and usually only the young and feeble minded come to the surface. You see the Esopus, even at its headwaters, is almost always stained. So with much reluctance, I decided to dedicate many of my winter nights tying nymphs, a whole lot of nymphs.
I figured investing so much time tying nymph after nymph would help me stay interested in nymphing even though I was sure I would cringe with every boring cast come spring. I thought of it like making a bet on a sports game I didn’t care much to watch just to make the game more fun. As I tied more and more variations, it lead me down a road I was unfamiliar with, euro nymphing and tight line nymphing. I watched every suggested YouTube video detailing the techniques involved. What struck me as odd, was that all of the water in the videos (mainly filmed out west, or in Europe) looked eerily similar to my home water of the Esopus. With its churning rapids and its boulder fields filled with racing water, I could envision just how effective this technique could be. Now, I was expecting to catch fish but what I wasn’t prepared for was the quality of salmonids I was bringing to the net. What further peaked my curiosity was just how fast the water the fish were holding in. I mean fast, white, gushing molecules crashing with such force as to be decimated back to its simplest forms of its boring origins of hydrogen and oxygen. Those daring swimmers would nose themselves to the very brink of that frothing explosion just waiting for my overweighted nymph to drift by.
This foray into the world of nymphing in fast water started to change the way I looked at water everywhere. A few weeks before I ventured to Alberta I took a trip to the Rangeley Region of Maine catching my personal best brook trout. For all you Maine brookie snobs, it was not on a dry fly on the Rapid River. It was caught while tight lining a Frenchie just feet from shore in a small eddie sandwiched between surging white water swirls. I started applying this technique everywhere, not just with nymphs, because this trick seemed to work just as well with streamers.
Fishing in the Rocky Mountains can ruin an East Coast anglers idea of good fishing. By ruin, I mean to make you wish you never had to return home. Don’t get me wrong, I love fishing in the Northeast and I love the awesome group of anglers I call my friends, but fishing for bull trout in Alberta amazed me. It was like taking every angry and aggressive strike I’ve experienced from a pike and stuffed it into one of my beautiful catskill native brook trout. Holy hell are those fish aggressive, especially if you know where to cast to them. I’d like to say that the fishing was easy, but damn did it start slow. I caught one lucky bull our first day, held right tight up against a plunging run in one of Alberta’s many deep canyon carving rivers. You see everything my friend Drew and I read concerning fly fishing for bull trout was that they liked to hold at the very bottom of the river’s deepest pools. So we went on a mission looking for ideal bull trout water, driving endlessly to find these “plunge pools” to cast overweighted rigs to the submerged freshwater sharks. We went the next two days without even a single sighting of these lurking lunkers. It wasn’t until our fourth day we stumbled upon a vague and outdated posted park map that showed a series of rapids and a waterfall nearby. As we made our way down into another unsuspecting canyon, our fortune changed. While fishing our way up the canyon, I started thinking about where that first bull trout was holding. It wasn’t holding in deep water at all, rather it was sitting in an unsuspecting eddy in a foot of water, right next to the plunge of fast water. I thought to myself, “Duh you idiot, stop fishing deep and throw your obnoxious streamer in the mess of traffic”. I made my first cast directly into a string of rapids, which was really more like a long strand of short waterfalls, and my eyes were stupefied. To my surprise, a long familiar figure burst from the white froth, unconcerned with its well being, it catapulted itself completely out of the water in pursuit of my streamer. Just like that, we had our recipe for success. We continued focusing all of our casts to crashing white water swirls at the edges of rapid and waterfalls with great success.
I urge you (if you haven’t already) to put down your favorite dry fly rig, grab yourself a heavy nymph or streamer and fish the seam that’s dangerously close to fast water. There’s a reason fishing with large weighted streamers and euro nymphing have garnered so much attention in the fly fishing community; because it works. Don’t be like that pretentious old timer in the back of the fly shop who scoffs at your oversized rod dangling with ostentatious meat. He’s just afraid of what he doesn’t understand. Styles change, flies change, and times change. Just make sure you praise the traditions without closing your mind to new techniques. Good luck and wade safe in that fast water!
AUTHOR
