TodayBrown trout are tricky critters
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Article RatingOne summer day Ted and I decided to fish together on the Letort and I picked him up just after dawn and we made the short drive to the urban creek that flows through Carlisle.
We both knew that even though the creek had a few problems, it still offered wild brown trout, complicated currents and enough insects to convince the browns to look up.
Most insects’ emergence and spinner falls occur during what we call “banker’s Hours” but the Tricorythodes hatch begins early and ends early. Most days during the summer months you’ve got to get up early to be on the water, when the air temperatures hover in the high sixties or low seventies.
It was that kind of morning but for some reason there were no trout rising to eat the exhausted mayflies floating past. I was just beginning to believe that sure enough the brown trout of the Letort were definitely tough to find and even tougher to catch.
Then at the bend downstream, Ted groaned and I walked down to see what was wrong. He was standing there with a broken leader and watching a big 18-to-20 inch brown trout finning slowly in a backwater on the far side. Just then the trout swam back across and began feeding fifteen feet downstream of where we stood.
Ted looked has his leader and then at my tiny fly and said “try for her.” I shook out some line and made one false cast, dropping the fly slightly upstream and without any of the reluctance Letort browns were famous for, the trout rose and took my fly.
When I lifted the rod to set the hook the tippet broke just as I felt the strength of the fish. It swam back to the slack water and sulked, while I checked the tippet, determined it was OK and my knot was probably the cause of loosing the fish. I tied another size 22 trico to the tip.
Ted was still fussing with rebuilding his leader and tippet, when the trout again swam across and began feeding again. I dropped the fly onto the water and shook out some line. When it floated over the fish, it calmly rose and ate the little black bodied-white winged fly.
This time I landed the fish and removed three flies and the better part of Ted’s leader from its mouth and returned it to the water. It swam across the far side again and sulked again but even after a half hour it stayed far away from us.
Sometimes even fussy fish can be caught by duffers like me, which is why I enjoy fishing the Tricorythodes. Unlike many other mayfly hatches the trico hatch begins along about July 5th and on any given morning until the first hard frost the little mayflies flutter over the riffles on many of our trout streams and trout rise to eat them.
I’m told that the first hatching insects are about a size 20 and as the season warms through summer the size diminishes to about a 24 or 26. I can’t see to tie a size 26 fly on my tippet so the smallest I tie is a size 24 but mostly I compromise and simply tie 22’s. Long leaders and very thin tippets are used. In our area fly shops now sell 7X tippets but it wasn’t always so. Before 7X we used monofilament sewing thread we bout at the five and dime.
Other than that, simply find a rising trout and a cloud of trico’s. The rest is up to you and the trout.
