** NOTE ** This article was originally published to Hatch Magazine in 2016. It is republished here, and it's one of my favorites It was a slow morning in fast water. It was a small fish day on a big fish river. It was a disappointment by noon, but fate was about to...
** This Troutbitten article is part of the Night Fishing for Trout series. You can find the full list of articles here. ** When the sun sets and the sky grows dark, the mysteries of a river deepen. Where are the trout, and how are they feeding? These constant...
** This Troutbitten article is part of the Night Fishing for Trout series. You can find the full list of articles here. ** I don’t night fish with others much. In fact, I can easily number the times I’ve ventured through the dark with a fly rod in the company of...
** This is Part Four of the Where to Find Big Trout series on Troutbitten. This all reads a lot better if you first go through Part One. Find it HERE. ** -- -- -- -- -- -- Rivers are built from just a few parts. While the sand and soil of a streambed is fluid, the...
Somewhere in your favorite stretch of a river there’s a depression at the bottom. It’s wide enough and long enough to hold a trout, nose to tail. It’s as deep as the trout is tall — or a bit deeper. The river flowing over this depression in the riverbed is fast enough to bring a continuing buffet of food. And the water comes with the right shade, ripple or depth to offer good protection. This is a special bucket. Let’s break it down . . .
“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge.” That’s from Robert M. Pirsig. And man, does it ever apply to finding big trout.
Just downstream of a run, right where it blends into what can fairly be called a flat or a pool . . . is the spillout.
I suppose you can point to a spillout every time a run dumps into the neighboring pool. The feature is always at the transition. But for our purposes — for seeking out big trout — only a small percentage of these spillouts are good targets. So let’s talk about that . . .
It does not take exceptional technique or skill to catch big trout. It takes an understanding of where they are and what they eat. It requires some forethought and persistence.
. . .Ninety percent of what you hear about most rivers is probably bullshit. Explore and learn these places for yourself. Try to forget the rumors. Discover the truth.
. . .Now I go to certain water types and river structures to target big fish. Every watershed that harbors the big ones has a few of these locations. It’s up to you to find them and fish them well . . .
Go ahead. Look back through the Troutbitten archives and you’ll find a bunch of photos featuring big, beautiful trout. Chasing the biggest wild browns is part of our culture. It’s a challenge, and it’s a motivator — something that pulls us back to the rivers time and again.
I have friends who are big fish hunters to their core. Nothing else satisfies them. For me, I guess chasing big trout is a phase that I roll in and out of as the years pass. And although I don’t choose to target big trout on every trip, I always enjoy catching them. Who wouldn’t?
Hooking the big ones is part of the allure of fishing itself, no matter the species or the tactics used. What fisherman doesn’t get excited about the biggest fish of the day? It’s fun. And it’s inherent in our human nature to see bigger as better. But is it? Better what? Better fish? Better fisherman? . . .
I’ll get right to the point: Your best bet for catching trophy trout is with medium to small flies. More specifically, large nymphs or small streamers are the perfect size.
I’ve written about making the choice between going for big fish or for a bunch of fish, arguing that you can’t have both. I’ve also pushed the point on these Troutbitten pages that catching big fish does not require fishing big flies.
Talking with my buddy, Matt Grobe, the other day, he summed it up like this: “Fishing large streamers is the most overrated thing out there for catching the big ones.” Nice. And this is coming from a guy who fishes the heart of Montana, around Bozeman and beyond, all year round.
All of this goes seems to go against currently prevailing wisdom, but it wasn’t always that way . . .
The longer a trout tugs, turns and flips at the end of your line, the greater the chance you’ll lose it. We don’t need a study in probability theory to know this is true. No, we all have enough firsthand stories about the desperate emptiness that accompanies a long...