Summer is lingering longer than usual. After a brief flirtation with fall, it just turned warm and dry again. The dogs aren’t happy.
I’ve delayed the start of our usual fall bird hunting escapades until it’s cooler and wetter and they’ll be better able to scent birds.
Still, all hope is not lost. The fly rod has been getting a little extra work as I’ve been spending my free time at a nearby tailwater.
Despite the typical late-season low water the fishing has been good.
The other day I worked a stretch that I’m still trying to sort out. I hit it first with a parachute Purple Haze above a tiny Copper John dropper.
When a fish poked its head clear out of the water to get a better look at the dry I swung, but with no result.
That was the only look I got with my dry-dropper set up.
I know guys that will fish a fly for 10 or 20 casts, then cut it off and start rummaging around in their box for something better. Unless I’m looking at a river covered in bugs and trout rising to those specific insects, I’m usually slow when it comes to changing flies.
I remain convinced that good presentations over feeding fish are more important than tying and retying on flies until I discover the exact match of whatever it is the fish are eating.
That, and I just prefer casting to tying clinch knots.
But there comes a time when even a man slow to change has to accept that it’s time to switch flies. So after a bit I snipped off the dry dropper rig and tied on a CDC emerger.
I think it was a PMD, but I’m not sure. I’ve become a convert to emergers and other like patterns such as the Quigley Cripple.
These flies that sit down in the surface film — rather than on top of it — just seem to be the ticket to get trout to commit.
The cool thing is that since at least a portion of the fly remains on the surface I still get to watch my bug dribble down the current. Emergers are almost like fishing dries, but more deadly.
The fly was new but the fishing remained slow. I was casting out into the river, to a seam about 20 feet from the bank where the faster water of the main current rubbed up against the shallows. Inspired by boredom I turned around and looped a cast downstream along the bank.
It was a rather pathetic cast. I opened up my loop and the fly landed lazily about 20 feet away.
Behind me my fishing buddy for the day, the professor, was watching. I call him the professor not because he’s some kind of magician with a fly rod, but because he’s actually a professor.
This was our first time fishing together so it was important that I didn’t embarrass myself. The cast could have done just that, but I quickly recovered, raised my reel over my shoulder, dropped the rod tip, and started feeding out line. Just as I fed the last of the line I’d stripped off the reel and readied to recast, the fish hit.
Fortunately, I set the hook in fish maw this time rather than thin air.
The fight was uneventful and I was able to hand land a nice cutthroat. Sixteen inches, but any fish caught before an audience — especially an audience that knows so little about me that they might be convinced I have a clue — earns bonus points.
The professor had to head home after that. Something about grading papers. I fished a little longer, slowly working my way up the grassy bank.
As the sun dropped behind the hill across the river, trout began to reveal themselves with delicate rises in the current. They were holding hard up against the bank. The closer I put the fly to the over hanging grass, the better I did.
I brought another nice brown to hand and lost a couple more. The air began to cool as the sun set. Bird season will be here soon enough.
Rob Breeding writes, teaches and watches his kids play soccer when he’s not fishing or hunting.