Grey/black Caddis time!

Wow, what a day Sunday was. A huge grey caddis hatch started about noon and was in full swing by 2-3. I can't remember ever having so many huge strikes on dry flys. When trout hit a caddis they don't seem to miss or mess around. I only missed 2 strikes all day. One because of slack line......The two most important things beginners screw up constantly that keeps them from catching fish is imprecise casting and line management. Not only do you have to put the fly where it needs to be without spooking fish, you need to manage the line through the drift so if you do get a strike it will result in a hook up and not just a lot of line pulled off the water. I mess those things up all the time and I am going to try and give myself and everyone else some advice. Be methodical when you come up to a spot. Stay back until you know where you want to set up, when you get setup take your time and make the first cast the best. I put down so many fish this weekend because I was so exited about making any cast I made the wrong one, from the wrong spot and spooked the whole pool. I did catch fish but I should have caught twice as many.

Clear water during the melt

The weather two weekends ago was pretty amazing. It was about 60 degrees and there wasn’t much snow in sight. I wanted to get out and fish but I was afraid the water would be really off color and super high. I decided to head out to my favorite brook trout stream that I thought would clear the fastest of any nearby. I was right, the water was clear but not as clear as it has been. I have seen it so clear you might re-think what a clear gin might look like. I could still make out the blue spots on the side of brooks in the calm pools. Stealth is key on this stream but since there are fish pretty much everywhere it is almost impossible to walk up to the stream and not spook something. The best bet it to find the plunge pools or faster riffles and start as far back as you can. I thought nymphing would be my best bet so I didn’t even bring my custom 6’6” Lamiglass small stream rod. Besides, there were intermittent wind gusts that would really test my patience later. I had a 3wt loaded with my new Shark Skin line and a 6x 9' leader. I tied on 18” of 6x tippet and thought I would give a Royal Wulff a try. My first cast landed about 2 feet from the really rough water in a plunge pool and instantly the water erupted around it. Wow, it must have been a long winter for these little guys. I pulled in a nice 7 incher.



It was a little tricky getting used to the new line. All this shooting slickness and floating was a little strange after fishing with my 3 year old Mastery SA line with the first 3’ converted to and intermediate sink tip due to excessive use.
I fished a few more spots up stream and circled back to a spot I never really had any luck in. It looks really good but I never really hooked a lot of fish there.

I switched to a Parachute Adams #18 and got a hit right away. I ended up landing about 10 fish from that spot and a few nice sized 10” fish.



There was no consistent hatch but I did see quite a few fish feed on the surface over the course of the day. There were midges and something else bigger I didn’t get a look at but was likely a Baetis (Blue Winged Olive). Maybe even a size 16. Pretty big for March but it was 60 degrees outside which is pretty unlike March. Funny thing was, I never even had to switch to something specific on top to get strikes. I love brook trout. You know it’s a good day when you stop setting the hook on fish you think are too small. The wind finally got the best of me and I was struggling to even hit the stream when gusts would pick up. I took down my rod and headed up stream to a section I haven’t fished to scout it out for next time. There were a few cars parked and maybe three guys fishing up there. I hadn’t seen anyone besides hikers all day. I kept my distance and watched for a minute. The first guy I saw was launching perfect loops and seemed to be in compete control. I hope that is what I look like out there but doubt it. They guys walked back my way and one of them looked a lot like Andy from the graygoat.com. It was him, we talked for a minute. What a nice guy. I thanked him for updating conditions and providing such great info about Minnesota and Wisconsin fly fishing. Cheers Andy!

WS season opener

I fished the Wisconsin trout opener two Saturdays ago. I went to, probably, the most crowded worst place to go for the opener, the lower Kinny. I couldn’t get out until about 1 in the afternoon and when I got to the lot at the park there were a group of guys getting ready to head out. There were three of them and I asked if they had any luck earlier (they were wearing waders when they got out of the truck). The bigger guy in the very nice Sims waders said they did okay over on the Rush in the morning. All three guys had fly rods, one had a nice lab tagging along. At this point I reailzed it was going to be a rough day. I forgot my reel with 3wt line and only had my reel with 5wt. Yep, only brought the 3 wt rod. I strung it up anyway, I wasn't going to let a 2 size overweight line ruin my first day out. I realized I’m not going through leaders like I used to. I had at least 8 feet left on a nine footer from last season. I’m pretty poor and I don’t tie my own leaders (see tying leaders and throwing beer cans, a previous post) so I used it anyway. I tied on about 18 inches of 6x and a trusty pink squirrel. I stated the walk out to my favorite spot knowing that if there weren’t three guys and a dog there someone would be for sure. The walk down was interesting. The ground was still mostly snow covered and I have felt soled wading boots because that is really all they sold when I got mine. They suck in the winter. I can’t afford $150 bucks for a new pair of boots so I fall a lot in and try not to break my rod for the third time (thank god for the Winston guarantee (calm down, I only have a $200 Ascent and it has the same warranty as the big boy rods).


There was a guy in my favorite spot so I headed down farther, two more guys in spots I usually skip. Hmmm, bad sign. I kept walking and found the three guys with the dog. They were standing about waist deep in about the middle of a spot I usually cast to, not wade in. Much to my chagrin, one of them hooked up and landed a fish as I was taking a few pictures up stream.

I had to walk out quite a ways and finally found some good water. I hadn’t fished the spot I started at and was happy to find it. Crowds are good for something. It was a little fast for early season, I’ll have to come back when the water warms a little and the fish get some energy back. Browns are notorious for laying back in the calmer water in pools. I caught one on the squirrel and moved on.


I switched to a bead head prince nymph (all #16s) and fished another spot just down from the three guys who were still, amazingly after 1 and a half hours, catching fish in the same spot. Life is not always fair.

I moved back past the crowd and walked back over to my favorite spot and, thankfully, a guy was just leaving. I moved in and decided I would give the old two nymph rig another chance. I tied on a size 18 orange scud to the bend of my bead head prince. Once I did that the action really started. I caught 5 in about 45 minutes. Two small fish on the scud and 3 bigger ones on the prince.






I’m not sure it always works out that the bigger fish go after bigger flies but it happens more often than not. The two nymph rig is the way to go. I had no trouble casting it and had no tangles. As long as the taper is set up right its easy. ~7.5 feet of tapered 5x leader-BH prince nymph-18 inches of 6x-scud. Overall, it was a good day. The weather was warm for March and the fish were biting.

Making the switch

I haven’t always been a fly fisherman. I still have my spinning tackle for trout but I never use it. I don’t even know where my box full of Panther Martins and worm hooks is. The last time I used my spinning tackle I was fishing for bass and big blue gill off my float tube. I strung up my line and broke the tip of a rod I had used since high school. I used to love that rod; it didn’t even bother me that I broke it. I wanted to learn how to fly fish but it seemed so arcane and obtuse to a bait fisherman. You cast the line? The fly hardly weighs anything? How does that work? There were more questions than answers. The different types of flies were so numerous I could barely keep straight what was floating and sinking let alone a baetis imitation or a midge. I would look at forums and see that someone caught fish on a GB prince nymph. I thought it was Great Britain….I was hopeless. If you saw me try to cast, it would make you want to duck and take cover. I took out more bushes and trees than trout that first year. I would bring my spinning tackle, catch a few fish and then switch to fly fishing to see how that worked out. It never did. Once I went fishing with my friend Mark. He was just learning to fish for trout and we were using worms. I think he caught one that day but I’m not sure. I caught a few on spinning tackle and switched to my fly rod. I needed to attach the tippet to my leader and was attempting a double surgeons knot. I say attempting because I never got it to work. It always slipped out. I finally gave up and became a decidedly sour fishing partner for a while. Mark has since switched to fly fishing and told me one of his funny beginner stories. He was sitting on the bank of a river in Montana (probably after paying something like $20 for a fishing license for the day) and couldn’t remember the knot to attach the leader to tippet. He finally gave up, tied the fly to the leader and caught a trout on a hopper pattern. That would have been enough to hook me on fly fishing. I have since learned that a baetis is a may fly and to not try to attach a thick leader to a tiny tippet with a surgeons knot. I now can catch way more fish with flies than I ever did with bait. I can tie most of my own flies and have more fly rods than most people have ties. And yes, my wife doesn’t understand why I need more than one fly rod let alone two 3wts a 5, a 7 and a 9. I sort of want a 0 but that’s silly.

My advise for learning to fly fish is pretty simple
Don’t take spinning tackle with you. If you go out to fly fish focus on that.
Don’t start with dry flies. Learn to cast a nymph, indicator rig.
Start with a small number of fly patterns but many sizes. (18-12 for most flies) Size is usually more important than the difference between a flash back pheasant tail and a natural.
Get decent equipment. If you have a $200 spinning rod and a $19.95 fly rod combo what are you going to want to fish with?
Don’t go overboard on expensive equipment either. You won’t know the difference between a Z-axis and a TFO for a long time.
Learn to tie flies. There is something great about catching/fooling a fish with a fly you tied. Most nymph patterns are pretty easy and it is a fun hobby. Like arts and crafts for adults.
Just go out and try it. Screw the books that say you can’t practice casting while you are fishing. I think the best motivation for learning to cast better is having fish right in front of you. Read about casting and maybe get a lesson then go out and do it. Learning on the water from a friend is the most common way people pick up the sport. For trout fishing you rarely have to cast more than 20 feet. Even I can do that.

I hope this helps, if I knew what I just wrote when I started thing would have gone better sooner.

Chaos machine: The two fly nymph rig

I used to go to the science museum a lot when I was a kid. The Ruben H. Fleet science museum in San Diego had this device that simulated chaos. Chaos can be defined as: behavior so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions
I agree that this is a slightly esoteric definition but it really sums up my point well. Chaos is not actually random but so many variables exist the outcome appears random. The machine at the science museum had a crank with an arm about a foot long. Attached to that crank were two other freely rotating arms. One attached to the crank and the other attached to the one attached to the crank. All of them were different lengths and thicknesses. When you turned the crank the arms seemed to go every which way and all would turn at different rates. Apparently, mathematics could not predict what the motions of the arms would be even if the input force and velocity were known. I hate maths. At this point you may be wondering why I am talking about a chaos machine on a fly fishing blog. The reason is that I created my own chaos machine two Saturdays ago.

I decided I wanted to fish a two nymph rig setup. I wanted to put a small (size 18) midge nymph trailing off my bead head. So, I had a strike indicator, about 3.5 feet of tippet (6x), a #16 pink squirrel, another 1.5 feet of tippet tied to the hook bend, then a #18 midge nymph (unweighted). I though I had a great setup. I could have a midge emerger nymph flowing through the current while the bead head was bouncing along the bottom. I have cast two fly rigs a lot in the summer. Dry-dropper setups and stuff. So this setup should have been easy. Not so. I neglected to understand how a strike indicator would factor into the equation. From the tip of my fly line I had built a perfect chaos machine. At no time could I predict where the strike indicator, the bead head, or the emerger would land. If they landed at all- I caught my share of brush behind me too. The emerger would dive for the deck during every back-cast and constantly snag. If I accelerated the cast prior to a rapid stop to shoot some line all hell would break loose. After a few casts of fearing for my life, hooks flying everywhere, I took off the nymph and order was restored. I know it is possible and even fairly easy to cast that rig if it is setup right but I failed, miserably. I should have tapered my leaders down. I needed a 5x 7.5’ tapered leader, the strike indicator, 6x tippet, the bead head, 7x tippet, then the nymph.  5x, 5x then 6x would be fine too.    It would have turned over much nicer.   The real key is to open your loops and relax your casting stroke.  Shoot tight loops with dries and open them up for nymphs with indicators and especially with two fly rigs.

  I’ll let you know how that works out next time. My money is on a slightly reduced chaos machine and a few more tangles than usual. It was the first time since September I had cast a fly rod; maybe I was just rusty.
I did manage to catch two. They were pretty small but I wasn’t fishing the best water on the stream. I’ll try down by the pasture stretch next time.

Winter Fly Fishing in Minnesota

Fishing for trout in Minnesota has a short season. First of all, winter lasts for approximately 13 months, and when the temperature is warm enough for fishing there are all sorts of other factors that make catching trout difficult here. It rains about once a week in the summer and by rain I mean torrential bust your windshield rain which means that the streams are clear for about 6 hours a week. On top of that we have the excessive heat and mosquitos that are so big most of the small trout, that apparently live in Minnesota streams, are so scared of the boieng 747 sized insects (about the size of a #8 humpty for you western anglers) on the surface they stay well hidden under the still frozen remains of the last guy who tried to fish for trout during the winter in Minnesota. Which brings me to my point: winter fly fishing in Minnesota is only slightly less dangerous than climbing mount Everest.

I am exaggerating a little about the fishing opportunities here in the tundra but all or some of those factors above do seem to work against you every trip out. Winter fishing is not new, in fact, many western anglers fish year around in the tail water fisheries where the water temp is constant year around. The same sort of thing happens around these parts but instead of huge dams and reservoirs keeping the water at a constant temp we have limestone springs. The driftless region of southeastern MN, southwestern WS, northern Iowa and about 10 square feet of Illinois was untouched by the last set of glaciers that blew through town about a brazilian years ago. The driftless region abounds with limestone bluffs and natural springs, which made the entire region a brook trout Shangri-La about a hundred years ago. Today, a few patches of hardwood forest remain, called state parks, and a handful of the original trout streams have been rehabilitated. Unfortunately, the streams were not stocked with the native brook trout but were populated with the more temperature tolerate brown trout. The area was devastated by poor farming practices and even poorer fishery management. The region is making quite a comeback and there are many beautiful streams to fish including a few that have thriving native populations of brook trout. If you can get someone to tell you where they are, good for you. Not going to happen here.
A select few streams in the driftless region of Minnesota are open for winter trout fishing. I’m almost sure this was done by the old walleye fisherman as some sort of joke on us feather and fur guys. In case you are from a warm climate and don’t comprehend how cold it gets up here I will try to explain (I’m from San Diego so I have a different prospective on the weather here than most natives). It gets so cold the ice on the lakes freezes so thick people can drive their huge trucks on the ice to their favorite fishing spot (they then proceed to drill a bunch of holes in the ice around their trucks to fish in. I never understood that logic). Some streams do end up freezing over. I have come up with a good rule of thumb you can use for picking a clear stream in the winter. Find out where I’m going and that will tell you, with out a doubt, which stream will be completely frozen over. I really know how to pick 'em. No, seriously, as long as you don’t go after a really cold snap (Ha, really cold. Its always really cold) some pools will be open. January and February can be a crapshoot but early March is the way to go.
The most common and universally infuriating nuance in winter fishing is iced up guides. Water sticks to your line and collects in the guides of your rod. Soon, you will completely freeze them shut and all line movement stops. This happens most often when a fish is on or when the fish are rising. At 30 degrees it will take about a dozen casts. 20, about 3 casts. 10, every cast. 0, I think your line freezes to the reel and won’t come off at all. I could be wrong. Even I will not fish when its zero. -10, go back to North Dakota.
Fishing tactics are a little different. You don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn. In fact, the warmest part of the day is the best and that is usually around 3 pm. As far as rods and stuff go, I like about an 8’ 3wt. You could go with a 5 but, unless there is a storm coming, the wind is pretty calm. Light and delicate presentations are the key. I use a 6x leader with either a 6x or 7x tippet. Theoretically, insects still hatch in the winter. There is actually a species of midge that has adapted to a winter hatch in Minnesota. There is a great article published a while back. The major scientific finding was that they had little purple #4 jerseys and came up to tailgate. A 70 denier purple thread with a fine gold rib and a purple plastic helmet makes a good imitation. The hard part is painting the horns on the size 20’s.

http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.1603/022.038.0131?cookieSet=1


Hatches do happen and trout do feed on the surface but the imitations are small. Really small. I’m talking maybe 32s. Okay maybe not that small. A 20-22 will do but even that is pretty small. I stick with an 18. On principle, I don’t fish with anything smaller than an 18. Your best bet is sub-surface stuff. I go with a #16 bead head pink squirrel and a midge emerger trailer. The bead head gets down deep and bounces off of trout heads and the trailer sits up in the water column a bit for actively feeding fish. A soft hackle would also be a good trailer too. I’ve heard about a hundred times to down size flies in the winter. I do, I guess. I usually would go with a #14 bead head whatever to start but in winter I start with 16. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go for a bigger fly. Winter/summer/and both solstices (yes, the plural of solstice) I catch most of my big fish off a #12 bead head prince nymph. 2x long so the body looks meaty. Fish are not as spooky in the winter as they are in the summer, which means you have a better shot at big fish. It probably has something to do with the fact that there are no ¾ oz rooster tails thumping them on the head in the winter.
Everything down there is hungry and ready to bite but only at a certain time of day or on a particularly warm day. It is not just slow fishing when it is too cold and fish are not feeding, it's like someone flipped the trout off switch. If you are out there at the wrong time or on the wrong day, just try to enjoy the beauty of the stream or the ice in your guides. If you hit it right through, a 37-40 degree day in March, you will be in for a treat. Remember- Barbless hooks or pinched barbs and all streams are catch and release only. Try to limit pictures and time out of the water.

The new year has arrived and winter trout season is now open in southeastern Minnesota. I went out this weekend and on my drive home I got to thinking about why there is a winter trout season in Minnesota in the first place. A couple DNR guys/walleye fisherman must have been sitting around a table drinking heavily and decided to play a joke on trout fisherman. After all, walleye fisherman are not stupid, they sit inside their heated fish houses, shot-gunning PBR and watching the game on a 50” plasma. Trout fisherman, during a Minnesota winter, have it a little tougher. We have to trudge though 4 feet of snow and slide down step banks to the river and if you were out this weekend, on top of all that, it was frozen over. Not just a little frozen over. There was snow on top of the seriously frozen over river. It looked more like a ditch that would be fun with snowmobiles than a trout stream. I knew my chances were not good when I was driving down and snow was drifting across the road from the 20 mph gusts. Ah, I’ll just use my five weight.
It has been pretty cold lately. The Mississippi is frozen over. Bank to bank about 200 yards of frozen over, snow covered, moving water. It’s crazy. It has been so miserable lately, when I heard the forecast of 18 degrees on Sunday I had to get out and fish a little.
18 seemed like a serious warm up. Unfortunately, that is still freezing and wasn’t enough to loosen the ice that had developed over the last month of sub-zero temps. I figured there had to be some water that was open that could be fished. I was wrong. Well, I guess there could have been open water somewhere but after about an hour of walking through waist deep snow I gave up. I only got about a quarter mile from the car. So let me re-phrase. There was no open water a quarter mile from my car, in one direction. So, back to those walleye fisherman, I’m down for ice fishing like that from now on. One thing ice fisherman don’t do, for good reason, is walk trough the water.


I had my waders on and decided to cross the river in one spot that had open water. It was three inches deep and moving fast. No trout there. I slid down the bank and landed on the stream side ice. Crack. I crossed the stream and barely got my boots wet. But I did get them wet and that was a bad idea. After walking around in the snow and then re-crossing at the same spot I got back to the car and found out my boots were frozen to my feet. Seriously, you guys have a plasma in there? Huh? My laces were frozen to my boots and water had gotten between the tongue and the rest of my boot. And guess what? Yeah, it froze them together. So, I decided to get back in the car and drive to a different spot and, hopefully, thaw my boots a bit. I got out and checked a new spot. Yep, frozen over. It actually wasn’t too hard to get the frozen boots off. Once I tapped the ice off the laces and between by laces and the boot with the reel seat of my rod they came right off.
It’s going to be 30 for part of the week and 30 on Saturday. I’ll give it another shot then. In two weeks I’m going ice fishing, in an ice house that is heated, so after that I may never fish for trout in the winter again. PBR? High life for me, if you got one.