October's For the Trout, Year Two

 

"...a little like October in a sense... in love with itself"  - Michael Palmer

    Fall's the great ephemeral American time for gratitude, a time of reflection and change. It's also probably the most overhyped season of the year for wild brown trout fishing. Every single fly shop in the area is posting videos about the epic BWO and October caddis hatches, the sick streamer bite going on. Back home, the striper bite is heating up along the beaches of the Jersey shore. Everything's in a rush come autumn. 

    Native brookies: some of the most incredible species we have in the East. They're resilient yet delicate fish that have survived in little cold, clean, pockets of mountain streams all throughout Appalachia. I've been trying to emulate them lately, attempting to be quiet, colorful, quick, and utterly intolerant of conditions where I can't be my best. 

    Fall is spawning time for brook trout, when the males turn their seasonally festive pumpkin orange and begin fighting for spawning habitat. In my opinion if you're wading for brookies, you're not in the right places. However, if you somehow have boots in the water in a brook trout stream, keep an eye peeled for their circular spawning redds, and just watch your step. I approach mountain stream brook trout different than I do with browns. Brown trout fishing for me is all about chucking big meat flies, attempting to get the biggest fish in the hole to kill something. When I'm on a brookie stream you can jump across, the goalpost shifts from catching the biggest fish or even the most fish. I just want the prettiest one. 

    On this morning so crisp you could reach out and snap the air in half, I managed to catch a few colored up ones on a Parachute Adams. I never throw anything but single dry flies for brookies, and never will fish anything else. Free-stone mountain streams are small and unforgiving enough that there is no need to fish slow and technical. Fish living in them can't afford to pass up any opportunities. Maybe that's another admirable quality of a brook trout. 

    After spending a few hours up in the mountains, I followed the path of rain down to a larger, winding creek at the valley basement, where the brookie stream was demoted to tributary status and the hickory tussock moths were scurrying around the groves of shagbark and bitternut. I moved a few browns and ended up landing three on a small articulated Peanut Envy. 

    For the entire fall, Central Pennsylvania has been cursed with below average stream levels. I prefer to approach trout fishing in my local rivers like a river fisherman instead of a trout fisherman. What are the flows like? Where's the structure where big fish like to hide? How do I present a fly best to trigger a fish to kill it? These questions will catch you better fish than learning the scientific taxa of aquatic macroinvertebrates. However, this approach hasn't been super helpful recently when there's barely a piss-trickle of water in many of our streams. Spring Creek has been about as low as I've ever seen it, and you can walk through pretty much all of Spruce without getting wet above the belt. 

    Here's the thing though: catching fish is pretty much all just a combination of location and timing. My favorite timing, especially in low water? Go at night when all the smart anglers who don't avoid personal responsibilities are tending to such matters. The night fishing recently has been great, stripping mouse flies and skating muddlers for audible brown trout. 

    Last night, I spent the evening beneath a bridge at Penn's Creek whilst the sun slowly danced down across the valley. One fish was moved during the daylight on a streamer. As soon as it got dark, I threw a muddler cross-current and heard a big swipe break the surface right behind it. Continued stripping and I soon came tight with an 18 inch night-time brown trout, my new personal best. I had just released that fish and made a cast upstream, half paying attention as my muddler swung past me in the current, when suddenly I hear a deep gurgle and a loud smack, one that moved more water than any other night-time hit I've ever had. I raise my rod to nothing there. Just a single giant October ghost. One that I'll keep searching for.