Recently, I went to several extremes on a trout trip into the mountains. I learned several things from this trip including using an overlooked tactic. Looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t realize my omission before, but this trip helped remind me of changing for seasonal conditions.
The first extreme was the temperature.
In the morning, there was ice in the guides after the first few casts. The low that morning was in the upper 20s where I was fishing.
However, once the sun broke over the top of the mountains into the valley where the river is, the ice was no longer a problem. I was comfortable and dressed in layers, with a capilene base layer, a fleece layer, and a wading jacket. Gloves and a warm hat completed my ensemble.
That particular river is one upon which I go “head hunting.”
“Head hunting” is throwing a large bead head streamer on a sink tip all day using 2X tippet. You don’t get lots of fish, but the ones you do hook up with are big. You can expect 3 or 4 fish on a good day. This is normally done while drifting deep pools and holes in the river.
That day, I was wading with a guide friend of mine on his day off. My friend told me before the trip to tie up #16 and #18 pheasant tails on scud hooks with and without bead heads. I thought to myself, “He has got to be kidding.” I had tried nymphing this river with scuds, sowbugs and stoneflies before without any success. Of course, I never went into the smaller sized hooks either. So, I tied up several dozen each and was prepared when we met up.
Sure enough, I was overlooking the small shallower runs that hold fish.
My first two casts produced two trout: a rainbow and a brown. I stood in one run and ended up getting three more trout. Most were 12” or smaller; however, this tactic of nymphing the runs produced several fish.
The generation caught up to us at the first spot so we headed to a spot downriver. The nymphing tactic worked there too. This is water that I normally would have power rowed right through to get to a deep hole. This spot produced three trout and a new species for my list: a Warpaint Shiner (Luxilus coccogenis) a beautiful native fish of the Appalachians.
The Warpaint Shiner was about 3” long, with a red stripe on the gill plate; red and black stripes on the dorsal fin; and black stripes on the forked tail. It wasn’t big, but it sure was pretty. It was something I never knew existed in the river, and something I would have overlooked if not for nymphing.
By now the sun was up and layers were coming off quickly.
It seemed to me it was actually getting hot. The generation caught up with us there and my friend had to head into town for some errands. I decided to run way upstream near the dam as generation should have fallen out of that area by now.
I was now down to a short sleeve t-shirt and baseball cap. I thought I might be getting a fever or something as I was really warm. I decided to fish on and caught a few trout, yellow perch, and two white bass at the dam.
About 1:00 I decided to call it a day. I got out of my waders, cased my rod and hit the road. While going through “town,” the temperature at the local bank registered 67 degrees. I thought to myself, “That can’t be right.” But I checked the thermometer on the trout wagon, and sure enough, it was reading 65.
So I wasn’t getting sick and running a fever, and that was good; but I realized we had had about a 40 degree temperature change in six hours.
I spent the entire drive home to Chattanooga trying to figure out how many areas on the river I have skipped in the past, and how to dress for frost and for low summer temperatures in the same day.