Brown trout [Salmo trutta], a favorite of many trout junkies – by Thom Glace, award winning watercolorist/illustrator.
Trout musings out of the water
As a young man, primarily trout fishing the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, I listened [figuratively] to all the minutia. Ad-nauseum how-to trout tips that have been part of fly fishing since the great sport of long rods made its way to us from Scotland.
- Fly fishing for trouts means mostly fishing on the surface. Since when?
- Using studs on wade shoes is the thing. No, it’s not the thing because walking with metal studs on wade shoes is an ear-shattering ambulance siren to all nearby trout.
- Shadow casting is something every fly fisher needs to know – Hollywood BS from the movie A River Runs Through It.
- Only big flies catch big fish. Fresh or saltwater, the fly’s size can matter but not an affirmative as in ‘only.’ What matters much more is presentation.
- Trout bite at dawn. Not necessarily and not ‘the trigger’; it’s the water temperature. Aquatic insects are temperature driven, and their stirrings parallel those of trouts and baitfish with growling stomachs [50º-ish to almost 60º]. Imagine that.
- You have to know a lot of knots. No, three or four could do it with a few more for saltwater, but certainly not a ‘lot.’
New River Gorge, West Virginia.
