Fishing
Migratory fish get under your skin. They follow a lot of rules, but they break almost as many as they follow.
That makes them a lot like an outstanding novel, with a beginning, a peak and an end. The story line comes together on a beach in the fall. Fishing conditions improve considerably, peak and then gradually wind down. Anglers study tides, lunar cycles, wind and water temperatures to determine patterns. When something doesn’t add up, they play hunches and take educated guesses.
In the Northeast, the fall usually means striped bass and blues on the beach. But from Chatham, Massachusetts, and westward, the Gulf Stream pushes close to land. From July through October, you’ll find false albacore, green bonito and skipjack. The fall run is addictive. Sometimes you’ll find peace in your fishing. Other times the fish will drive you just plain nuts.
Weather and Moon
The fall run has been the subject of fishing lore for decades. From the 1940s to 1960s, the Cape Cod beaches were the places to be, period. From Nauset Beach in Orleans through Race Point in Provincetown, 40-pound bass were considered rats. Four-by-four campers with tin skiffs strapped atop them brought anglers who fished around the clock from shore or from beach launched skiffs.
This continues today, and hard-core anglers from Maine through New Jersey head to the beaches to get in their last licks of the season. Technically, the autumnal equinox, around Sept. 21, is when daytime and nighttime are nearly identical in length. In the fall, days grow steadily shorter, whereas they grow steadily longer in the spring. Sunsets come earlier, and fall winds shift from southerly to Canadian Maritime northerly. Cool, dry air with high cloud ceilings and mare’s-tail formations reflect the strong winds, and there is a greater difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures. Sunrise and sunset colors change too, from oranges and yellows to more purples, greens and blues.
Figuratively, fall begins with the “Striper moon,” or the first full moon in September. Kenny Abrames dubbed this time frame, as it represents the first major push of the striped bass migration. During some years, the striper moon is early in the month; other years, it is later. Regardless it is a great time to get out and fish. In New England, the biggest shore-caught bass of the year are landed around the striper moon.
October’s Indian summer, though, is a pleasant respite from September’s initial cold weather. It’s when the fall feels like summer. History alleges that the two-week warm spell was when American Indians harvested the bulk of their crops, hence the name. Most of the pelagic fish will follow the retracting Gulf Stream south at this time, so the end of Indian summer usually marks their departure.
Learn to Read the Birds
As in so many other fisheries, birds are hugely important to the fall run. But they don’t just indicate the presence of fish and angling opportunity—rather, they can tell an angler what kind of bait is in the water.
Terns hit small baits, mostly silversides, bay anchovies and sand eels. When they hover close to the water’s surface, they’re on a big pod of bait with predators underneath. If they’re winging it high, they’re looking for food. If they fly fast right above the surface, albies or bonito are probably in the mix (as opposed to the slower striped bass and bluefish).
Most gulls are scavengers, but they too can tell you what kind of bait is around. Herring gulls feed on herring, but they also love mackerel. When a flock of herring gulls works together, there is probably a school of big bass underneath the bait. Black-backed gulls are the most aggressive and basically eat anything smaller than them. Their value to anglers is similar to that of black-headed laughing gulls, as they love crustaceans, particularly crabs.
Shearwaters feast on squid but also follow schools of mackerel and menhaden. The Cory’s and the sooty are two popular shearwaters in the Northeast. Storm petrels, meanwhile, are skimmer birds that tiptoe their way across the water’s surface in search of plankton. Petrels follow bigger bait like the squid and mackerel that feed on the silversides and the anchovies that feed on the plankton. Petrels and stripers love shrimp.
Gannets are plunge divers that soar 50 to 70 feet high. When they get a clear view of their favorite food, herring, they crash into the water, with air sacs cushioning their impact. Gannets use their wings to swim to bait, which they either inhale or impale with their long, pointed beaks. When you see a flock of them diving along a beach, you’re in for a treat.
Sea ducks are common in the fall. Mergansers feed on small baitfish like silversides, sand eels and shrimp. Common eiders like small bait as well, and king eiders like squid. The oldsquaw feast on shrimp, while surf scoters target crabs. Diver ducks like tide lines and frequent Oceanside beaches with good current and tide seams, but they’ll move into the bays and estuaries with the bass and blues.
Belly Up to the Bar
Northeast beaches in the fall are ripe with bait that stages and then pushes on the various moons. If you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’ll miss the silversides, sand eels, glass minnows, herrings, peanut bunker, anchovies, mullets and butterfish that head south for the winter.
Find the bait, and you’ll find the fish. Bait stages in coves during half-moons and moves on full moons, so you’ll want to fish points of bars on the full and new moons and coves on the quarter moons. If you go to an area and see a lot of bait but no fish, then switch spots. I guarantee that the fish found more bait somewhere else! The schools of fish move into either the wind or the tide, whichever is stronger, so you should pick your next spot with that in mind.
When you arrive at a beach at low tide, preferably at a negative tide, you’ll be able to see the terrain that will set you up for the moving water and an approach.
Onshore bars connect to shore. They typically run at an angle based on the dominant current. Start fishing at the drop, and work your way out to the point. As the tide begins to flood, fish your way back to shore. Fish the point and both sides, and watch the bowl along the leeward side, where the bar joins land. Bait and fish will gather in that bowl and move over the bar when the water is high enough.
Bull-nose bars are rounded and look like an upside-down letter U. Sometimes fish hold in the lee; other times they feast on the windward side. Watch the way the current moves over the bar, and cast your fly up and across, letting it swing into the adjoining deeper water. When the fish are tight to the beach, you won’t have to cast very far.
Parallel offshore bars are not connected to land and have hard-running currents blowing through on all sides. At low tide, they may be exposed or just slightly underwater. An easy way to find a parallel offshore bar is to look for a “tribe.” Surfers love a good beach break! Sometimes the back bowl between the beach and the bar is chockablock with bass. Other times the fish are on the outside edge. And still other times they’re working the currents on either end. You can wade to some offshore bars on the low tide, but wear a Farmer John wetsuit. As the tide comes up, you can float back to shore.
Points are spits of sand that jut out into the ocean, while bowls, or holes, are basins that have deeper water and lots of current.
Use ranges to mark mother lodes. Take a longitudinal point and match it with a latitudinal point, and X marks the spot. The right end of a cottage porch and a lobster buoy could be a coordinate in its simplest form. Other common structures are water towers, buoys, breakwaters, channel markers, rock piles and trees.
Northern New England and Massachusetts Bay
From August to mid-October, Dave Gibson, of Great Bay Rod Co., fishes beaches in the fall from Maine through northern Massachusetts. He doesn’t see lots of birds marking fish in Maine and New Hampshire, but instead he drives along Route 1A looking for beachfronts that are sandwiched between the rocky coastline.
He typically searches for those spots around low tide and returns to fish them during the last few hours of the food through the first few hours of the drop. Because of the cold water, he likes Monic intermediate lines and adds a variety of lengths of lead-core lines for additional depth.
Running the beach at Plum Island,Massachusetts, is the easiest way to find fish. Because of the usually present sand eels, Gibson sees more bird activity there. Still, he’ll tie longer flies because of the diverse baitfish that dump out of the river systems.
In Massachusetts Bay from September to October, schools of striped bass split, with some migrating on the inside of the bay. With all of the river systems from the North Shore down through the South Shore, there is never a shortage of baitfish dropping out. The last beach on the South Shore is White Horse Beach, and it is just north of Cape Cod Canal, where all the bayside fish push through.
Cape God and Rhode lsland
In September and November, other fish follow the Labrador Current, which runs from Plum Island to Cape Cod’s Race Point. According to Capt. Dave Steeves, of Fishing the Cape, the fish seem to split.
“Race Point, in Provincetown, has historically been an exceptional spot,” he says. “Some of the fish will move along the bay side, and Sandy Point, on the outside of Barnstable Harbor, is excellent. We also find bass and blues along the outer beaches in Truro, Wellfeet, Eastham andOrleans. Reverse the spring patterns, and you’ll find them.”
Fishing the Cape owner Bruce Zeller reports that the number of bass on the Oceanside beaches is smaller, but the quality is outstanding. “This past year we saw a tremendous amount of bait right up on shore, and long casts weren’t necessary,” he says. ” As the water cools down, we change fly lines and favor the Cortland PE+ Crystal and the Airflo Cold Saltwater fly lines because they don’t kink up.”
Anglers consider Rhode Island, the Ocean State, the smallest state with the longest run. “As the migration starts, you’ll find fish dropping down from Upper Narragansett Bay,” says Peter Jenkins, owner of the Saltwater Edge in Middletown. “While most anglers think of fishing the beaches of South County, the Upper Bay beaches are great places to start to fish.”
As the fish drop down from Upper Narragansett Bay, the Saltwater Edge’s general manager, Arden Gardell, says he “finds fish spreading throughout Newport’s First, Second and Third beaches, from the cobble beaches around Narragansett down through the rocky and sandy Scarborough Beach and throughout South County. From the sandy Matunuck to the rocky Carpenters Bar to the expansive Charlestown Beach, Weekapaug and Napatree Point, you’ll find the bass and blues throughout all of the stages of the run.”
There’s always something to be found during the Northeast’s fall run. While the addictive quest can indeed drive you nuts at times, there’s plenty of peace to be found in this fishing.
Fishing
Hey, I found the deep spot. During the short window for wadefishing the bayside flats near Wellfleet, Mass., one cloudy June afternoon, Tom Keer chased a striped bass off the edge of a sandbar into a neck-deep channel. “The 12-foot tides drop to less than 2 feet for just a few hours,:” Keer says. He had been sight-fishing a spot where stripers often go after sand eels when he hooked one on the fly. “It ran into deeper water where the current started to drag it, and I had to follow or risk losing all my backing.” Eventually the striper broke off.
Keer adds that there are ways to pass the time between wading opportunities on the Cape. “At slack tide, it’s all sand and we amuse ourselves digging for littleneck clams until the tide comes back up.”
Photographer: Barry and Cathy Beck
Location: Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Sporting Travel
Everyone loved Nottman’s house, and it is one that I will remember forever.
His house was traditionally tasteful but classically understated so that it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. The appointments and accouterments were comfortable instead of lavish, and the setting on the river estuary near the ocean was wild and natural. It stood several miles from the quaint downtown and was civilized, to boot. The house was big, maybe close to l0,000 square feet, but no one cared in the least about the size.
Nottman was a sportsman, and the modest 1200 square-foot cottage across the Belgian block driveway from his house was his castle. The single-floor dwelling had weather-beaten cedar shakes and a hunter green tin roof. In the carport garage sat a fully restored 1981 Jeep Scrambler. A five-station sporting clays course lay off the path that connected the cottage to its deep water dock. Here, Nottman had a choice between a 23-foot Sea Craft, a slew of kayaks and a cat boat for gunk-holing around. The boats blocked the duck blind, but when the birds arrived in the late fall the hulls would be put up on blocks. The main house may have been his wife’s, but the cottage and the grounds were most certainly his.
While everyone was in awe of the exterior and the grounds, it was hard to separate that from the cottage’s exquisite interior. A mahogany gun cabinet stood in a corner next to the fly-tying table, and both of those areas were next to the rod racks. There were dozens of fly rods, fall-run surf rods, offshore standup rods, and some thick, trolling meat sticks. Leather couches and chairs stood en garde in front of a big-screen television which was next to the bar. A wood-burning fireplace took the chill off the air that inevitably leaked through the leaded-glass windows.
The writer John Ed Pearce once said, “Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave and grow old wanting to get back to.” When they’re young, sportsmen want to travel the world and see all that their sport has to offer. After a while they miss home, that simple place of being surrounded by favorite gear and like-minded souls.
Nottman created his own oasis, and if you’re industrious, you can, too. And while you’re looking for that perfect place, consider that some may already exist. Some version of a sporting community or fractional opportunity may be just the ticket. Walking out your front door to go fishing, riding, or shooting is what it’s all about, isn’t it?
South Carolina Sporting Life at Brays Island Plantation
The Brays Island homeowners are living what would seem to be a bygone reality–the pastoral pleasures of a leisure class of Southern plantation owners. The 5,500-acre private residential community features 3,500 acres set aside as a nature and hunting preserve. Remarkably, the land is virtually unchanged from its earlier days when Brays Island functioned as a working plantation.
Whenever they like, the 325 co-owners of Brays Island Plantation can walk from their front porches into a private sporting playground to hunt and fish, ride horses, paddle kayaks, play golf and swing through a round of sporting clays. A spirited match of tennis or a workout in the fitness center is set in the quiet scenery of oak trees and camellia gardens, early 1900s farm buildings of whitewashed brick, bluff-edged river views, and native woodlands of pine and palmetto. When you’re refreshed, stop by the elegant owner’s Inn for lunch.
The mix of natural beauty and diversity of activities creates Brays rare and strong appeal. Situated in the South Carolina Lowcountry between Charleston and Savannah, this combination of amenities and location makes Brays Island Plantation more than a gated sporting community. Brays is a haven for those who appreciate both nature and a host of outdoor sporting pursuits. In fact, it’s a way of life (www.QuailAtBrays.com, 866-320-1201).
Tropical Paradise at the East End of Grand Bahama: Deep Water Cay
Island life in the Tropics revolves around the tides, and at Deep Water Cay it has never been better. Since 1958, Deep Water Cay has played host to some of the most famous names in angling history. A multimillion dollar renovation has poised the Granddaddy of Bonefish Clubs for a bright and vibrant future.
The 2.1-square-mile land is home to a mixed-use club where homeowners, club members, and visiting anglers become reacquainted with life’s simplicity. Activities range from sight casting to bonefish and permit on 250-square miles of flats; offshore fishing for wahoo, tuna, and mahi-mahi; and reef fishing for a wide variety of species. Scuba dive the blue holes, hookah dive or snorkel the reefs. Spend the afternoon paddling the turquoise water in a kayak, or come about in one of the club Hobie Cats.
Once on the island, everything is a walk or a golf cart ride away. The executive chef prepares a variety of day-boat seafood in the breezy ambiance of the Member’s Lodge. The Welcome Center the epicenter of activities, perched next to the marina, the Tiki Bar, and the floating docks. Play a match of doubles tennis or a workout in the Fitness Center. An afternoon perched in a teak steamer chair by the Infinity Pool or on the private beach is a great idea, too. An outdoor massage while you listen only to the waves lapping against the shore is a terrific way to end the day.
There are a limited number of lots where homeowners can build cottages to suit as well as turn-key properties. Members and guests select from two- and four-bedroom houses, complete with all the amenities of home. Seven cottages are available for smaller groups, and all buildings are waterfront and offer spectacular sunrise and majestic sunset views.
Deep Water Cay is 100 miles east of West Palm Beach (www.deepwatercay.com, info@deepwatercay.com, 888-420-6202).
Belt, Montana’s The Ranches at Belt Creek
The Ranches at Belt Creek is an 800-acre residential ranch community that is the vision of Mark E. Hawn and his son, developer Mark Christopher Hawn. Ranch lots are available for purchase, and 200 acres are maintained for outdoor recreation by members, their families, and guests.
A full-time ranch manager and club concierge oversee all facets of the club. The heart of The Ranches at Belt Creek is the Sportsmen’s Club. Members, their families, and guests choose between various activities. Fly fishing, horseback riding, kayaking, big-game and bird hunting, sporting clays, golf, ATV excursions, and a range of winter activities.
What makes The Ranches at Belt Creek appealing for many is the complete freedom that the club offers. Fly fishing equipment, shotguns, horses, kayaks, ATVs, snowmobiles and associated gear is available for use. There is zero upkeep, insurance, and maintenance to be handled by members. Pick your activity, grab your gear, and go.
In addition to the seemingly endless adventures to be shared on site, homeowners and members are provided with exclusive access to the Hawn’s family ranch. The 6,500 acres are located some ten minutes up the road from the residential ranch community. Big-game hunters particularly like the ranch because of its large populations of deer, elk, bear, turkey, and mountain lion. Bird hunters favor Montana for the pheasant, sharp-tail grouse, Hungarian partridge, sage grouse, ruffed grouse, blue grouse, and chukar partridge. Flyrodders like the nearly eight miles of Belt Creek that winds through the land and offers outstanding trout fishing. For more information contact The Ranches at Belt Creek at www.ranchesatbeltcreek.com.
Montana’s Bitteroot River: A Fractional Ownership Opportunity
Rather than buy and appoint a home onMontana’s Bitterroot River, why not buy in to an existing, fully appointed home? Windermere Real Estate is offering two of three shares in a turn-key, 2,300-square-foot ranch-style home. An opportunity like this is oriented for serious fly fishermen or for folks who are looking for a family retreat. The three-bedroom, two-bathroom home was completely remodeled and landscaped in 2009. Two of the bedrooms are master suites with private baths. A gazebo and hot tub are on the property, and the house won the 2009 Parade of Homes Award.
The main draw is walking out your back door to access 150 feet of private river frontage. For anglers who want to cover more water or to head to some of the other famous trout rivers in Montana there are two different boats parked on a trailer in the yard. The first is a Clacka-Craft Low Profile Drift Boat, and for streams with rocks and strainers there is an NRS Rubber Raft. Two vehicles are available for use: a Ford Excursion and a 450 GL Mercedes.
For someone who loves the Missoula area and wants to be done with the hassles and get on with the fishing, a fractional opportunity may be the very best bet. Anne Jablonski at Windermere Real Estate (www.movemontana.com, 406-546-5816) can make it happen.
Fishing
It was as perfect a September as ever.
The temperature at night was cold enough to ice the deck of my boat, and hot enough during the day to make me sweat. Indian Summer as it’s known here in the Pilgrim State of Bassachusetts. Before the sun was up I walked into my driveway and stared at the ice on the boat. Instead of slip-sliding my way around the deck until the frost melted, I decided to grab a pair of boots and head for the beach.
Lots of fish were around because it was fall and time for them to migrate. The coves and bowls were full of silversides, sand eels, and small menhaden, and several species of predators took their seat at the table. The striped bass ranged from schoolies to 35-pounders, there were pods of late-run shad, and a mix of bluefish, bonito, Spanish mackerel, and false albacore. Anywhere you looked there were fish. They were on the flats, on the beaches, in the rips, at the mouths of the salt ponds, and on the reefs. Labor Day was well behind us and the crowds were thin. I tossed my kit in my truck, fishtailed out of the driveway, and headed up Cape.
I turned left down an overgrown dirt road to the back of a salt pond. The brush slapped the truck, and somewhere not far away a covey of quail sang whoooo–whit, whoooo–whit. I tucked into a small opening, pulled on my waders, grabbed my rod, and trudged toward the cove, flushing several mallards from a nearby mosquito ditch. I marked the quail and the ducks, and in a few weeks when hunting season opened I would return with my setter and my 20-gauge. And if at that time I were lucky with the birds I might also pick ripe beach plums and rose hips for chutney and see if I could swap a mallard for a bag of cranberries freshly harvested from the bogs.
I chose a salt pond that would have bass and blues inside, and bonito, shad, and albies at the mouth. It was a large pond, the kind that would take an entire day to walk around, and it was protected from the wind. I would start fishing at the mouth, and as the tide flooded I would work my way back to the truck.
I first saw him from a distance. He was a tall, thin kid standing on the jetty. The rocks had shifted from decades of pounding storms and L?-foot tides, and they were slick with kelp, mussels, and barnacles.
The jetty terrain is second nature for most fishermen, I thought, but he moved awkwardly. I chalked it up to his youth. He wore a tattered T-shirt, a pair of swim trunks, and Tevas. Why anyone would walk on a jetty without Korkers was beyond me. In his hands was a rod about three times his height. It looked like a fall-run surf stick, the kind long enough to toss a Goo Goo Eyes Big Daddy with a trio of trebles all the way into next week. Most of the kids on the jetty had shorter sticks, usually around 7 or 8 feet long.
It was odd. It was odd that this kid had such a long rod before the fall run had even begun. Odder still when I scanned the water and saw a long yellow floating fly line on the water.
He must have heard my cleats crunching the shells at the waters edge, because he turned, and I saw a large fly reel mounted on the grip. I looked back at his fly line and it extended to just about the other side of the channel. This wasn’t a particularly large breachway, but it had to be all of about 250 feet wide. If he had a nine or ten-foot leader it would have meant that this kid cranked out a 235-foot cast. I watched him knurl his line slowly, and when a big school of false albacore blew up near my feet, I didn’t cast.
Instead, I studied the sand. There were cracked quahog shells mixed in with some razor clams and bay scallops. They were colorful shards of calcium with bright reds, lavenders, yellows, and oranges all mixed together. I don’t think I ever noticed the beauty and texture of these ordinary shells. The scallops had their rippled surfaces, the razors were sharp and shiny, and the quahogs were blunt with their purple and black trim. I thought I would remember this moment for the rest of my life; I was about to meet the first kid who could cast farther than me, and a lot farther at that.
When I surf, I prefer a following tide. I look for a wave’s steadiness and its consistency. I like the wave to grow, crest, roll, and run hard. I like it to roll over an offshore bar and go way up onto the sand. As I looked at that long line on the water, I bore witness to a rite of passage. This next generation, like the water, was passing through my previous one. It never much mattered to me before. Then again, the generation surpassed was never mine.
The water was flat, the sun grew increasingly warmer, the tide was running, and a pod of albies shredded anchovies and sand eels a rod’s length away. I did not dare cast. Instead, I thought about the first trout I caught on a Squirrel Tail I tied when I was ten. And the first 20-pound Atlantic salmon I landed. The first bonefish that inhaled my Gotcha. Having my butt kicked by a kid would be just another memory that I would store in a closet with my sweatshirts, fly rods, and shotguns.
Perhaps I should learn from this master? He strip-struck twice, and raised his rod for the fight. The amount of line in the air resembled a tightrope in a circus act. I sat back down.
I thought about a fishing trip with my father decades ago off of Napatree Point. There weren’t many bass in those days, and when the tide turned. an enormous school of bluefish moved in. I caught a fish and my dad didn’t. Then I caught another and he still didn’t. It went on like that all afternoon. We had a quiet ride back to the dock and a quiet time hauling the boat. We drove home in silence. Now, I just scratched my head.
I stood up, brushed the sand off my waders and walked out on the jetty. The kid’s fly line was tangled in the rocks, and there was a small striper flopping at the water’s edge. “Need a hand?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. His hook pulled before I got down to the fish, and the schoolie dropped in the water. “I like it when that happens,” he said. “It’s hard to release the fish with all this line out.”
“Yeah,” I said, “You’re casting halfway to Falmouth.” “It’s not hard,” he said. “Sometimes it’s tough dealing with the line, but the casting is a cinch.”
I never suffered the woes of having 235 feet of fly line bunged up. I was happy with a 100 feet, and this kid more than doubled my best. He sought empathy from me, not sympathy, because his miles of fly line had tangled in the rocks.
I surveyed his outfit. “That’s an expensive rig you’ve got,” I said. “It’s not mine,” he said. “It’s my dad’s. He never uses it. He bought it a few years ago but he can’t figure out how to cast it so it just hangs in the basement. This reel is sweet, but it’s expensive, too.”
“That’s nice that he let’s you use it,” I said.
“Let me use it? If he knew I had this rod out here, he’d kill me. It’d be easier to land fish if I could set it down, but I don’t want to get a scratch on it. This is my lucky rod. I catch all my fish on it.”
“I don’t know how to cast a Spey rod that well,” I said.
“A what?”
“The rod you are using.”
“What did you call it?”
“A Spey rod. They’re used for salmon fishing. Named after the River Spey in Scotland.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that’s what it was called. Why don’t you use one?”
“I don’t cast them well. Anyway, not like you. Why don’t you show me how to do it?” I asked.
“Sure. It’s really simple. I see that you keep waving your rod back and forth, but I just cast once. Just pull it back, wait for a minute, and let it rip.”
“Let it rip,” I said. “Please.”
The kid pulled the rod back over his head and paused for a few seconds until the line quieted down and then he pushed the rod forward as hard as he could and stopped when the tip-top was at eye level. The entire line and much of his backing whizzed out through the guides and kerplunked nearly on the other side of the bank.
“That’s all there is to it,” he said.
“That was my best cast today.”
“Why is it splashing so much at the end?” I asked. “A piled leader doesn’t make that much of a splash.”
“It’s the sinker. I can’t go any lighter than a three-ounce pyramid with the current. The clam belly adds weight, too. Besides, the fish don’t care about the splash.”
A pyramid sinker and a clam belly.
“That’s great,” I said. “That’s really great. Your dad would be proud of you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I just have to be careful how much I tell him.”
“Well, if I see you guys on the beach together some time I’ll make sure I don’t bring it up.”
“That’d be awesome,” he said. “l don’t want to get in trouble.”
Fishing
Over the years I’ve found brilliance in events that don’t go according to plan.
That was the case last fall when I visited the Farmington River and saw anglers in every spot I wanted to fish. I had to laugh; Indian Summer was in full swing with its warm days and cool nights, the maples were turning scarlet and orange, the white birch were a colorful yellow, and trout were on the feed. Why wouldn’t the river be crowded?
At the bottom of a pool below a feeder stream was a gravel bar that allowed safe passage across the river and my only chance for some solitude. Safely across, I could wade upriver and fish the back side of an overlooked mid-river island.
About halfway up the island was some pocket water. It necked down into a small, shallow riffle that turned into a pool. The pool bent toward shore and cut under a bank. It bounced off some big rocks at the bottom and was a beautiful piece of water, all rolled into a 30-yard stretch.
Shortly, I saw a good brown perform a splashy rise near one of those rocks. Then another, and another. I inspected those rocks, and saw the shucks that explained those rises. Isonychia!
The first time I encountered these rich, eggplant-colored bugs, which are commonly called mahogany duns or slate-wing duns, I spent an entirely frustrating day changing from emergers to a wide variety of dries to a slew of nymphs with no luck. It was only during the final minutes of the day, when I botched a cast that put a lot of drag in my drift and fast motion to the fly, that a big brown whacked that speeding nymph. Since that time I’ve always used a fast swing when fishing this hatch, and it’s served well.
Here’s why that tactic works: Isonychia swim almost as fast as a dace and they climb on structure like a stonefly to shed their nymphal shucks–basically Isonychia duns are unavailable to trout and, therefore, it’s almost futile to fish a dry fly when an emergence occurs. But trout do chase down those fast-swimming nymphs, which I match with a size 12 or 14 Didas’ Swimming Isonychia Nymph.
While those duns aren’t important to trout, the Isonychia spinner is. It occurs most often in riffled water and can be matched by several noted patterns, including the White-Gloved Howdy, an lsonychia Comparadun, or a Beck’s Emerger-lsonychia. In contrast to fishing an Isonychia nymph, when fishing a spinner you’ll want to employ a dead drift.
There are two versions of Isonychia in the fall, the larger bicolor and the smaller sadleri. The hatch occurs on many Eastern, Midwestern and some Southern tailwaters and freestone streams, including emergences on such noted waters as Connecticut’s Housatonic River and Michigan’s Ausable. Wherever it occurs, the hatch typically comes off in early afternoon and lasts into dark-graciously, there’s no need to set the alarm clock earlv for this one.
Because Isonychia nymphs swim quickly you can forgo some of the extreme technical fishing required to match other fall hatches; you know, those painful experiences that require magnifying glasses and 8X tippet. Instead, you can throw a variety of classic patterns, such as the Leadwing Coachman, a Zug Bug or even a Pheasant Tail Nymph. My favorite pattern is Tim Didas’ aforementioned Swimming Isonychia Nymph. Didas spins the bug on a swimming nymph hook, adding a component that lights up the fish.
Looking back, it wasn’t so bad getting displaced by those other anglers on the Farmington. Browns and a few rainbows rose for hours, I had a quiet stretch of river to myself, and I was in the middle of a hatch that didn’t require much precision or stealth. I waited until the sun was long gone before I quit the stream, knowing I’d be back the next day.
Best Bets
Delaware and Beaverkill rivers, NY Connecticut River, NH Deerfield River, MA Penn’s Creek and the Little Juniata, PA Davidson River, NC Manistee and Ausable rivers, MI Hiwassee and Little rivers, TN
Didas’ Swimming Isonychia
Hook: Tiemco TMC400T, size 12 to 14 Thread: Burgundy 8/0 Tail: Three partridge after shafts Body: Burgundy dubbing Rib: Fine gold wire Thorax: Peacock herl Dorsal stripe: White Flexi Floss Wing case: Gray hen hackle Legs: Partridge
