Five Tips for Tackling New Trout Streams
You may like your favourite trout stream a lot, but sooner or later you’re going to find yourself on new waters. Maybe it’s the day your family lets you take off to go fishing while on some far flung vacation trip. Or maybe it’s sneaking away after an out of town business meeting for an evening of fishing. Or maybe you simply feel the urge to try something different once in awhile. Whatever the reason, here are five tips that will help make those new experiences successful experiences.
Find out all you can ahead of time.
Local fly shops can be a wealth of information about local conditions.
Sometimes trying new water is a spur of the moment thing, but more often, you’ll be able to anticipate the opportunity. That’ll give you the chance to do some research. There may be books or magazine articles or other publications on your new water, including hatch charts and maps. The internet has also become a very valuable source of information, and that includes chat lists and chat groups on the internet. Local fly shops are another good source. Most have websites which often contain information about local streams, including current conditions and details about what is hatching. When you get to the locale of your new water, a visit to the fly shop will enable you to ask even more specific questions about where and when to fish and about which local fly patterns are especially hot. Having arrived streamside, don’t be shy about asking local anglers a few questions as well.
Do some initial scouting to identify the best spots on a particular stretch.
While there is a tendency to want to begin fishing at the first point that you contact a new stream, the better approach is to scout it first. A hike for a quarter mile upstream or down will give you a much better feel for a stretch that you are going to fish. Make mental notes of spots that look particularly promising. You may think that the first pool is a good one, only to discover that it pales in comparison to the ones a little further up. And if you only have a limited amount of time available, you want to be concentrating on the best places. In fact, you may want to make several of these scouting hikes during the course of a day’s fishing to find as many of those better places as possible.
One stonefly nymph husk among a bunch of Isonychia mayfly nymph husks (click on the picture to enlarge).
Do your scouting from the bank, not the water, to avoid spooking fish. Swing even higher onto the bank to give particularly fishy looking places a wide berth. Look for rising fish and hatching insects and check spider webs as you go for more clues as to what has been hatching. Stop a couple of times during your initial scouting to turn rocks over to see which nymphs or larvae are most common, and keep an eye out for the colouration of minnows in the stream.
Trust your experience. Mostly.
Midstream boulders are good trout lies no matter where you find them.
Much of what you know from your favourite trout streams is going to translate well to new waters. A larger mid stream boulder is as likely to be a good trout lie in Ontario’s Grand River and Saugeen River as in New York’s Beaverkill River or Arizona’s Oak Creek. In the same vein, the distance which you are required to place your fly upstream of a rising fish in your usual water is likely going to be the same distance in new water. However, don’t rely on your experience so much that it blinds you to the need to adapt your techniques to the different conditions and circumstances of new water. If your usual techniques aren’t working, then be quicker than usual to try something different until you discover what will work.
Use a searching fly pattern and a searching cast.
The Brown Bivisible–a good searching pattern.
Your research ahead of time, hatch charts, and your streamside observations may provide you with lots of clues as to what fly you need to be using on your new water. However, if you’re not sure, have some searching patterns in your fly box too. All other things being equal, I like to fish dry flies, so I will usually try a dry first. Dry fly patterns that make good searching patterns tend to be impressionistic patterns like the Adams or Elk Hair Caddis, but my favourite of late is the Brown Bivisible. The Brown Bivisible, as it’s name suggests, is highly visible to both the angler and the trout, and floats extremely well. It’s ability to float enables it to be used in a searching cast. A searching cast is one that lets you to try several things in a single cast. You begin with a dead drift in imitation of a newly hatched mayfly. You then allow your dry fly to swing in the current in imitation of an escaping insect, such as a sputtering caddisfly. You next allow your dry fly to repeatedly drown, then pop it back to the surface for a shorter dead drift, in imitation of an emerging insect, before finally picking the fly up and starting again.
If dry flies aren’t working, then try versatile nymph patterns such as the Gold Ribbed Hares Ear Nymph or Woolly Worms, or versatile streamer patterns such as Woolly Buggers or the Black Nosed Dace.
Be careful.
Finally, remember that your new waters are not your familiar, comfortable waters and be extra careful, especially with your wading. You won’t know how deep that next pool is until you step into it, and by then it may be too late. And unfamiliar waters can behave differently as well. I remember fishing a new stream north of Peterborough one spring and stepping onto a gravel bar in relatively deep, fast water only to have the unusual currents at that point begin washing the gravel bar out from under me. Fortunately I was able to scramble ashore before my waders completely filled with water and I was dragged down and under. But it was a valuable lesson in fishing new waters.
