{"id":3616,"date":"2015-03-04T15:11:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T20:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/?p=3616"},"modified":"2015-03-04T15:43:19","modified_gmt":"2015-03-04T20:43:19","slug":"ten-tips-for-catching-wild-trout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/2015\/03\/04\/ten-tips-for-catching-wild-trout\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten Tips for Catching Wild Trout"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"redwhiteblacksmall\"<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

W<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

ild trout are unusual, especially outside the Mountain West.<\/strong> \u00a0Many anglers around the country go months or years without ever casting to a wild trout, thanks to stocking programs supplying hatchery-bred rainbows and browns, especially on tailwaters downstream of hydroelectric dams. \u00a0As a result these anglers may not realize that many of the tactics they employ for stocked fish are less effective (or even completely ineffective) on “natural fish.” \u00a0Here are ten tips to keep in mind when targeting river-born, often seasonal, wild trout.<\/h4>\n

\"rhodosmall\"#1 Stealth is your friend<\/h3>\n

Hatchery-bred fish are inured to the presence of humans literally from the egg. \u00a0These fish have swum in, under, and around human feet all their lives. \u00a0They may or may not eat your fly, but they are very unlikely to bug out and swim away in a panic merely because you enter the water. \u00a0Their wild brethren are the exact opposite. \u00a0A truly wild trout will not tolerate the presence of a human being if it knows the person is there. \u00a0Whether in lakes, small creeks or large rivers, if you fail to move in a stealthy way, considering where you cast and when and even what clothes you wear, your success rates will plummet. \u00a0You cannot overdo stealth when it comes to wild fish; on some mountain fisheries I wear my deer hunting clothing and spend a lot of time crawling on my knees.<\/p>\n

\"20070310221401_scoutingsmall\"#2 Use your eyes<\/h3>\n

Because wild fish are spooky, you are much less likely to accidentally catch one by blind-searching water than on practically any stocked patch of tailwater. \u00a0This means techniques you may consider to be your bread-and-butter, like Czech nymphing over a run, are very unlikely to bear fruit. \u00a0Instead, focus on covering a lot of territory and trying to spot the fish before it spots you. \u00a0Once you see a wild trout, your chances of bagging him go up exponentially.<\/p>\n

#3 Wild trout are LESS scared of flies and line<\/h3>\n

If wild trout were as spooky of flies and flyline as they are of human beings, we would hardly know they exist. \u00a0Luckily this is not the case. \u00a0Wild trout may not like large lumbering animals pushing wake over their shoals, but they typically do not give a whit for a passing fly line. \u00a0Truly wild trout can easily be taken on monofilament tippet up to 0X, using comically large flies. \u00a0I have seen large seasonal rainbow trout cross a shoal to snatch an extra large Clown Nose egg pattern during their spawning run. \u00a0I have even caught an 18 inch rainbow trout by dangling the fly out of the rod tip a couple feet and miming a drift into his face. \u00a0As long as they don’t feel you, they’re unlikely to feel your gear. \u00a0The only caveat here is to avoid outright lining a fish. \u00a0Always take an angle when casting at a spotted wild trout; your best shot will be casting directly \u00a0upstream with a reach cast bringing the line about 20 degrees away from straight over his back.<\/p>\n

#4 Learn what trout LOOK like<\/h3>\n

If spotting wild fish is the name of the game, you need to know what you’re looking for. \u00a0It’s usually not as simple as “see fish, know fish.” \u00a0Seasonal wild trout, both rainbows and browns, tend to be drawn upriver by freshets or pulses of water brought on by rain. \u00a0(Browns typically come up in the fall, rainbows in the spring). \u00a0With heavier flows, a fish can resemble an abstract painting at best. \u00a0A good rule of thumb: with rainbows look for a teal or red streak in the water that may move laterally. \u00a0A rock never moves. \u00a0Colored up spawning fish will sometimes show their red flanks, while almost all deepwater rainbows have deep green backs which look teal in clean water. \u00a0For brown trout, which have better camo but favor lighter flows, look for the shadow of the fish. \u00a0If you see a lengthy dark streak with another streak of exactly the same length next to it, check the rear of the blob for a vertical line. \u00a0That’s its tail, one of the only unnatural shapes on a fish.<\/p>\n

\"20070310221704_postreleasesmall\"
Rainbows in spawning mode have a red streak beneath a teal line.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

#5 Protect and enhance your vision<\/h3>\n

Most seasonal wild trout fisheries occur when the sun is still low in the sky, either early or late in the year, and often under dense forest canopies. \u00a0In these situations you want to have high quality amber or “sunrise” sunglasses, both to protect your eyes from swatting rhododendron or\u00a0pine branches, and to help you spot fish. \u00a0Even though this may sound like a “specialty lens,” don’t scrimp, because wild trout are also often some of the biggest you will get a shot at all year.<\/p>\n

\"20070310222754_iancrabtreerainbowdry2small\"#6 Cover territory<\/h3>\n

Seasonal wild trout, especially rainbows, are usually present in rivers flowing down into larger bodies of water (whether lakes or deep rivers), having swum upstream into shallow water so that they can spawn. \u00a0During their spawning run they will search for Nerds-candy-to-pea-sized gravel in which to cut their redds. \u00a0When not actively spawning they will often stage at convenient locations, most typically where smaller creeks intersect larger waterways. \u00a0In order to maximize your chances of finding a staging fish, or even one moving up during a fresh pulse of rain, you need to cover a lot of ground. \u00a0Mountain wild trout fisheries tend to require up to three to five miles of hiking in a day. \u00a0Bring a wading staff (or a large net) and use it. \u00a0In the backcountry the worst thing that can happen is a leg or head injury.<\/p>\n

#7 Fish upstream not down<\/h3>\n

All wild trout are more sensitive to human presence than their quasi-domesticated brethren. \u00a0With that as a given, consider which way water flows: downstream. \u00a0Any time you take a step into the river, you are dislodging dirt and sediment which will let fish downstream know that something unusual is occurring. \u00a0They will literally smell you coming. \u00a0Conversely, if you only fish upstream, you’ll always approach fish from behind (because their eyes are on the front end, after all), and all your sediment will wash away behind you. \u00a0Wild trout fishing is more like deer hunting than it is stationary tailwater fishing, which means you need to play the currents, just as a deer hunter considers air currents when he masks his scent.<\/p>\n

#8 Use your government-supplied resources<\/h3>\n

Believe it or not, the U.S. government does a heck of a job providing resources for outdoorsmen. \u00a0We have free topographical and GPS mapping, not to mention free water level monitoring data. \u00a0Get to know and love the USGS’s Waterwatch <\/a>site, which provides real time updates of water levels which can indicate when fish will be moving.<\/p>\n

\"brookiesmall\"#9 Brookies are wild trout too<\/h3>\n

Although not as large as their brown or rainbow trout cousins in *most* of their range, brook trout still provide a fantastic opportunity to test out your wild trout skills. \u00a0Hungry to the point of suicide at times, they can be a great introduction to the principles of stealth, seeing fish, and using hunting-style tactics. \u00a0Pick up a $30 gas station fiberglass three weight and a handful of foam hopper patterns, and you’re set.<\/p>\n

#10 Respect the wild trout<\/h3>\n

Hatchery-bred fish are a tremendous resource and an important learning environment for almost all fly anglers. \u00a0And, certainly, many of our nation’s hatchery-supported waters also support populations of wild fish in and amongst the truck-released fish. \u00a0But a truly wild trout fishery is a rare and valuable thing. \u00a0While it might be perfectly legitimate to take home a stringer of 11″ stocked rainbows on a tailwater, doing the same thing on a mountain fishery during a strong wild trout spawning run is cutting off your nose to spite your face. \u00a0No one is going to replace the fish you take home except the fish themselves, and in a wild trout environment with no pellet feeding, growth rates are usually half those of the tailwater fish. \u00a0Wild trout are thus especially well suited to catch and release angling. \u00a0And remember, if you keep your spots quiet, you’re likely to be the one returning to catch those fish in future years anyway.<\/p>\n

\"20070310221609_mondohensmall\"
This wild fish was returned to be caught another year.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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W ild trout are unusual, especially outside the Mountain West. \u00a0Many anglers around the country go months or years without ever casting to a wild trout, thanks to stocking programs supplying hatchery-bred rainbows and browns, especially on tailwaters downstream of hydroelectric dams. \u00a0As a result these anglers may not realize …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ten-tips","column","onecol","has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/files\/2015\/03\/redwhiteblacksmall.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3616"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3633,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616\/revisions\/3633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itinerantangler.com\/blog\/podcasts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}