Readers Secrets

How to Catch More Trout
By Joe Brooks

Follow these techniques from a master angler and you'll add fun to your fishing and fish to your creel.

Every move you make in trout fishing counts for or against you. The way you approach a pool, how you retrieve, how you strike, how you play the fish, how you land him -- all are important factors. If you plan your tactics according to the demands of each situation, you'll catch a lot more trout over a season.

Tactics are easiest to plan when trout are rising. Then you can see the writing on the surface of the water as the feeding trout show you where they are. At such a time, your obvious choice is the dry fly fished upstream.

The first thing you should do is stand by the pool and study it awhile before you fish. Locate the trout that are rising consistently. Choose one (the lowest in the pool, preferably), and work on him. If you rush right in and start casting, you'll probably put down several fish that you haven't seen. And you can scare still more fish by false-casting all over the place. A dozen fish you might have caught with a more careful approach may see the line and go down before you even drop the fly on the surface.

One day last October on Silver Creek near Sun Valley, Idaho, I ran into a classic example of what you can accomplish with the proper approach. I stepped into the stream at the foot of a pool about 100 feet long and 50 feet across. It was slick and had an even flow of water, but at the tail it narrowed and the current gained force. I saw a trout come up squarely in the middle of the tail. Another one showed on the left side of a patch of moss near the right bank, 15 feet above the first riser. Twenty-five feet above the second fish, on the left side and only a couple of feet out from the tile-lined bank, a big old mossback came up in a head-and-tail rise. I wanted to rush up immediately and work on that baby, but I knew if I did I could just write off those other two trout, and probably the lunker as well. The fish I would scare at the tail of the pool would run frantically upstream and spook the big one.

So I worked carefully into position to cast to the trout at the tail of the pool. This was thin, clear water. If I didn't make the first cast almost perfect, I might flush the trout. I'd have to cast with the rod held out to the side, horizontal with the water, so that the fish would not spot the false-casting. I took my time, made the sidearm false-casts well away from the fish and dropped the fly three feet above him. It went over him drag-free. He rose and took, and I was into him. Though I was using a 5X tippet with a breaking point of 3.3 pounds, I put on all the pressure I dared to keep the trout from running up into the pool and scaring the two other fish. It worked. He turned and raced down my way. I finally landed him just below where I had stood to cast. I released the trout and quietly waded a bit farther up the pool. I was zeroing in on that riser near the raft of moss. When I got to what I figured was the right spot to cast from, I stood still three or four minutes, just in case the fish had become suspicious.

But he came up again. I let him settle for a moment and then made my try. The fly seemed to float perfectly over him, but he didn't show. I let the fly drift a good 15 feet below him before I picked it up. Lifting the fly and line too close to him would certainly have put him down.

Again I carefully cast, and again there was no response. After a half-dozen casts, I knew something was wrong. My first thought was that drag was causing the fish to refuse. Yet the fly seemed to be floating jauntily and without drag. Drag occurs when fly and fly line are floating in currents of different speeds. This situation causes the fly to move faster or slower than the current on which it is riding or to skid across it. A trout will seldom take such an unnatural-looking object.

To overcome drag you must cast in such a way that the fly will have several feet of free float above and over the fish. The simplest way to achieve this drag-free float is to cast harder than is necessary to get the distance you need and then stop the rod high or even pull back on it a bit. The strong forward impulse of the line will cause it to come sharply on the reel spool, producing a recoil that makes the line fall to the surface in a series of S-curves. The current must pull out all those curves before it can affect your fly, so in the meantime you get several feet of drag-free float.

But there in Idaho I knew I was getting a good float. What was causing the trouble?

The tippet was the next thing that came to mind. But I figured 5X should be fine enough. Then I noticed that the sun, high overhead, was throwing a cablelike shadow of the tippet on the bottom. Maybe that shadow was warning the trout. I would have to put the fly over him in such a way that he couldn't spot the shadow.

The fish was only 40 feet away and I could have waded farther upstream and made an S-cast across, thus sending the fly over him with the leader off to the side. But why take a chance on downing him by wading?

I decided to stay where I was and cast a curve to the right so that the fly would go over the fish ahead of the leader. To do this you make the usual upstream cast but finish without putting the tip of the rod into it. It's as if you cast with only the middle of the rod. The line will go out in what you might call a sloppy manner, with a slight curve to the right, because that final push of the ordinary cast is missing. The fly will curl around and land ahead of the leader tippet. When the fly comes over the fish, it will look as unencumbered as a natural.

The technique worked on this trout. He took the fly and jumped at once -- a foot-long rainbow that had wanted hidden offerings served up without a flaw. Again I worked at holding him downstream, landed him there and let him go. With that fish out of the way I was in good position to try for the big one 35 feet above me. He had stopped rising, probably a little disturbed by the actions of the fish I had just landed. But rather than cast blindly in hopes of interesting him, I stood still to let things calm down.

This waiting is one of the hardest parts of trout fishing for me. The seconds seem like hours. I want to cast right away to get at the fish. But I know that I'll down more than I catch if I use those big tactics.

I had to wait two minutes before the big trout came up again. He took a small Light Cahill natural. I took off the size 18 Flying Black Ant I had been using and tied on a No. 16 Light Cahill.

Up he came again, making a loud slurp that raised goose pimples on my arms. I was itching to cast right then, but I wanted to give the fish time to get back to his lie after that last bit of lunch, to settle down and to look upward again for whatever might be coming down the escalator. Two minutes later he saw a size 16 Light Cahill drift across his window. He eased up, and inhaled it, and I was grinning up a fit at having got all three of those trout to hit. In slick, clear water like Silver Creek, a trout can be scared by a shadow, flushed by a boot grating on gravel or sent into flight when he sees an arm upraised to cast. You must hide from the fish so he can't see you looming against the sky. The lower you are in the water or on the bank, the less chance he has of seeing you.

So stay down; kneel to cast if you are on the bank; and whenever possible try to take a position in front of bushes, trees or a high bank into which your body will blend.

Yet in certain circumstances you can get quite close to trout. When you are fishing a dry fly in fast water, trout don't seem to be the same scary fish. This is just as well, because fast water presents other problems. You can seldom use a line cast in fast water. You must move in and work closely. If you throw a lot of line, the current grabs it, pulls on it, drags the fly across the water in an unnatural way and pushes the line in on you so fast that you can't control it. You can't retrieve fast enough to keep a tight line to strike a fish or to make a proper pickup for the next cast.

So in fast water you should fish a line not more than 25 or 30 feet long and concentrate on the most important thing -- the retrieve. Make your cast upstream and finish with the rod tip at a 45-degree angle to the water. When the fly hits and starts down-current, make a long, fast strip with your left hand to pull in about a yard of the line. By the time you have repeated this strip a couple of times your fly will have covered most of the water possible. If a fish should take, you just pull back on the already high-held rod to set the hook.

If no fish hits and you want to make another cast, use the roll-cast pickup. As the fly floats down even with you, come forward with the rod, snap your wrist as if you were hammering a nail and then follow through. The line, instead of going behind you as it would when you make the regular pickup, rolls up into the air right beside you. As you follow through it straightens out in the air in front of you. Then a back cast and one false-cast are usually enough to give you your timing to drop the fly lightly where you want it.

With a little practice you will quickly master the roll-cast pickup. And if the fly is coming down-current to your left, you can readily adjust by making the cast backhand. Slant your right arm across your chest with your hand at shoulder height and the rod at about a 45-degree angle to the water. Then make the hard forward thrust and follow through.

The roll-cast pickup is useful in many other situations besides fast water. On slick water it enables you to pick up your fly neatly and quietly with little or no disturbance of the surface. To me it is the best pickup in any upstream dry-fly-fishing situation.

When you fish a dry fly, you can get a little extra float in several ways. Often you'll need the extra float to reach a difficult fish.

If, for instance, the fly has drifted down directly opposite you and is still floating free, you can push your rod downstream and extend your arm as far as possible, thus adding several feet to the float. This extra float time can help elicit a strike.

Again, a trout may be rising so close below you in the stream that you will down him if you wade ashore to get into better casting position. You can take such a fish by making an S-cast downstream rather than across as described earlier. Drop the fly about five feet above the fish. The fly will get that much float before the line catches up with it and starts to pull. If the trout doesn't take, retrieve the fly slowly so that you don't scare the fish. Bring the fly well upstream before lifting it from the water.

Often when you cast your fly across current to the far side of a run, the current pushes the line downstream in a bow to cause that old bugaboo, drag. This is a good time to mend your line -- to flip it upstream so it is farther upstream than the fly. While the line is working down again, the fly will get a foot or so more free float.

To mend the line, push your fly rod out toward the far bank. Then, with a twist of the wrist up and out, flip the line upstream. The action is a sort of upstream-and-out roll that lifts the line off the surface and deposits it about two or three feet farther upstream. The outward flip propels the line forward enough to keep it from pulling the fly toward you. When you really master line mending you'll be able to do it without moving the fly at all.

Never pass up the tails of pools, as they often are fine holding places for big trout.

Casual casting into a pool will sometimes produce a few trout, but this carefully planned attack that covers all the holding water is bound to up your take considerably.

Another prime spot to look for trout is in the cushion of water in front of rocks where the water hesitates before splitting to both sides. The inverted V of water on either side of a rock is another likely holding spot, as is the eddy in back of a rock.

Always drop your fly along an overhanging bank and just to the deep side of an underwater ledge. And don't pass up the points of fallen trees where they dip into the water and their branches divide the flow of the stream to provide a little current. In fact, any object that sets up a bit of extra current provides an ideal spot for a trout to lie and look for tidbits riding the surface.

An important part of your fishing is knowing how to land your catch. It's heartbreaking to have a nice fish in close and then lose him through poor handling. The most important thing to remember when you are about to land a fish is to keep its head up so it can't fight well. Raise the rod tip to hold the line tight. If you are using a net, be sure to leave enough line between the trout and the rod tip so that when you raise the rod and push it back to bring the fish in, you can reach him with the net. Beginners often reel in too much line and get the fish to within four or five feet of the rod tip. Then they find that they can't get him close enough to net.

The safest way to land a fish is to beach it. If no low bank is handy, you can fight a fish until he is tired and then pull his head against a bank or an upjutting rock and pick him up. Hold him gently. The tighter your grip, the more likely he is to spurt from your fingers, break your leader tippet and escape. Even if you intend to put him back, you want to feel that he is really yours -- a trout you have cast and caught and released because you planned it that way.