Avoid summertime blues

By Richard Tate
Contributing Writer

During a long trout season, fly-fishermen must adjust to various conditions if they want to be successful. This is especially true during the fluctuating conditions of summer.

Often, July is a rainy month, and most streams’ water levels rise as the rain falls. This often requires fly-fishermen to fish “down and dirty.” Nymph-fishing becomes a preferred method of fly-fishing in this scenario.

Not only does the fly-fisherman need to attach one or two heavy nymphs to his leader; he might also need to attach one or two split shot to his leader to get his nymphs down deep where the trout are feeding.  

As a fly-fishing guru once noted, the difference between a nymph fisherman and a successful nymph fisherman is often a split shot or two that helps him to get his fly down where the trout can find it.

This was certainly true last summer when it rained regularly till mid-July. Still, I was able to catch trout consistently. On July 8, I enjoyed a typical morning.  

My fishing journal reads, “I started fishing about 6:30 a.m., fishing about a mile of stream. It had rained again overnight and was really humid and already 70 degrees.  

“The 58-degree creek was up a little more and was gray, so I added two #8 shot to a two-nymph rig, both size 12 beadhead Hare’s Ears. I was two hours and 17 trout into the morning when I latched onto and landed a nice 17-inch wild brown trout.  

“I like to end an outing with a nice trout, and I headed back to the truck after landing him.”

With all of last summer’s rains, mountain freestone streams flowed at nearly ideal levels until midsummer, and I was able to travel to a couple of these before the water shrank in August.  

When I fish freestoners, I like to probe them with dry flies, “fishing the water” in the absence of visibly rising trout. This is not an affectation; it is an enjoyable, effective method of catching trout.  

Only a couple of days after the above-described fishing adventure, I had driven more than an hour to a mountain run I like to fish. It was in perfect condition on this mild afternoon and only 60 degrees at 1 p.m. I knotted on a size 14 tan Wright Fluttering Caddis and fished till a little after 3.

The fishing began a little slowly; but as the afternoon progressed, I increasingly ran into fish that were eager to eat the little caddis. By the time I had reached the upper end of the section of water I had chosen to fish, I had landed 16 wild brown and native brook trout. A couple of the browns pushed 14 inches, and that made the outing a special one.

When the waters receded as the rains slowed down as summer advanced, I had to alter my fly-fishing tactics. The little freestone streams became increasingly difficult to fish, as the fish became tough to approach in the low-water conditions.  

I concentrated my fishing on spring-fed streams where the water remained cold and did not shrink to the low levels that existed on the mountain runs. I also stopped adding extra weight to my leader, choosing to fish with only one nymph as opposed to a pair, and used smaller flies than I had when the water was flowing more swiftly. 

These adjustments worked for me. For instance, when I got back home from a “vacation” to the dreaded Eastern Shore, I spent the next morning on a small valley trout stream.  

My journal reads, “It was a mild, sunny morning, and I fished from 6:20 to 8:40 a.m. with a size 14 Copper John. In water that was only 62 degrees and was much lower than it had been before we left a week ago for the beach, I was into trout consistently the whole time.   

“The fish were mostly small 8- to 10-inchers, but I managed a handful between 12 and 13 inches. A 16-inch wild brown early in the outing was just beautiful and made my day.”

The good summer fishing continued, and I was able to get some innings in on a large, famous river about a half-hour from home as the waters shrank. On this hard-fished river, I did not catch nearly as many trout as I had on smaller streams, but I did manage a few larger ones.  

On the morning of Aug. 9, I used a heavily weighted beadhead Hare’s Ear and dredged several large runs not far from the river’s only fly shop. I landed eight trout, but two of them were 16 inches and another pushed 20 inches.

During the summer, water conditions can fluctuate significantly with the weather.  To be successful, a fly-fisherman must adjust his tactics appropriately.