Autumn is a time when fishing for brown trout, good-sized fish at that, is easy in a satisfying way. From early September until sometime in the sleet and blustery gloom of November, brown trout are aggressive, colorful predators charged with the excitement of the spawning urge.
This is a time when my home state of Montana--along with much of the West--is dominated by the feeling that winter is just over the northern horizon. The smell of snow is in the air mixed with the decay of needles and leaves.
Even the light is different--clear like delicate crystal with an orange-gold cast. Cottonwoods blaze yellow. Larch are on fire.
Mornings are crisp and filled with frost; the sky, when not boiling with dark storm clouds, is blue. Plain pure blue. By afternoon there may be a warm breeze, and the nights are filled with stars, bright planets, and a silver-white moon.
Darkness comes early in October, around seven in the evening, but in the soft gray of dusk browns feed steadily on Baetis duns just below a brief riffle on the outer edge of an eddy spinning in a small river.
Casting a Blue-Winged Olive, there is sufficient metallic light on the water to see both the pattern and the rise. The browns are eager and the long, light leader does not scare them. The first trout at the end of the pod is 14 inches, bright and marked with jet black and crimson spots. Flanks and belly are copper fading to soft gold. The back is brown. Neglecting minor differences in size, all of the fish are identical--colorful, muscular, and eager to hit the small dry.
By dark I'd had enough for a few hours and went back to camp for a drink and a grilled steak. The river was placid where I sat and the sound of feeding browns mixed nicely with the crackling of a small fire. Shooting stars fizzled overhead regularly.
Autumn, brown trouts, good weather. Perfect. None of the fish exceeded 17 inches. The bigger browns would come with the overcast and icy rain of late October and November. Then the large fish would cast aside their innate sense of caution and move out to eat as aggressively as their smaller relations had done this evening. The period preceding spawning is a time of heightened territoriality; combined with the autumn feeding imperative, it creates wonderful fishing.
Taking the browns on dries is addicting, but working a size 6 or unweighted Woolly Bugger with a four-weight is entertaining, too. The cast must still be bank-tight, often skipped beneath cover, and even a stout 1X or 2X tippet snaps against the resistance of a willow branch on occasion. Quick strips turn browns all over the place and they came slashing and splashing after the streamer. I've taken browns in creeks and tributaries like this from one end of the state to the other, and in Idaho and Wyoming as well.
My addiction to fall brown trout hunting will never be satisfied. Every little willow-choked creek, ditch, or canal has the potential to hold nice trout. As long as there is shelter, some cold water coming in from somewhere, and an absence of sediment, there will be bugs--caddis, mayflies, stoneflies, midges--in adequate numbers to feed the browns. If a hard frost has not made its presence felt, there is a good chance grasshopper patterns will excite the browns.
Something about this habitat intrigues me to madness. A little stream running within a hundred yards of a tavern in Bynum, Montana (I'd stopped in for a cheeseburger, some home fries and a cup of coffee), is a case in point. I figured I'd be back home in Whitefish in well under three hours until the bartender mentioned that the guy at the end of the bar had caught a five-pound brown in a nearby creek only this morning.
I was in big trouble. I wandered in a predatory daze through a field of volunteer wheat stubble to a stream that had all the signs of brown trout frenzy--willows, thick grass, and earthen banks along with icy water running over clear gravel. So much for the home fires.
Stepping quietly into the stream (no surface activity sighted), I launched a Bugger tight to a curve in the stream. One strip and a brown swirled. I love watching the rod bend double in my hands, the tip bobbing spasmodically up and down as a strong trout tears line in spurts and gasps from the reel.
There's nothing to do when a stream like this meanders through a fall day but laugh out loud and keep on fishing. The brown came to net--fat and colorful like all autumn browns, with a pronounced kype. Rows of sharp teeth cut the top of my index finger as I curved the hook free. The fish sank from sight and a drop of scarlet blood dripped into the water. A handful of silvery-blue Baetis drifted by.
I thought I'd better call home, and I hoped the landowners would let me camp here. There were some clouds sailing above me heading east, but the weather looked like it would hold for a while. This looked like a two-day engagement, at least.
Copyright (c) 1996 John Holt. All rights reserved.
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