Fishing a River

In the last article we tried to talk you into fly fishing rivers more often. This time we will tackle some common situations inherent to river fly fishing. The tactics can, for the most part, be transferred to any species though they are most closely associated with trout fishing.

1. You are upstream of a complex run, 2 currents intersecting and pockets created by rocks.

Now a lot depends on how spooky the fish are. Brook Trout are well known for being very easily fooled with flies but are also easily spooked. So with spooky fish you only get one chance so your fly placement needs to always be subtle and splashing the water with your fly or line is a no no. Having said all that, the broken surface of the current will mask your presence to a degree.

So make you fly choice and cast to the areas closest to you. Let the fly drift off to the side before retrieving it and use a ‘roll cast lift’ to make it air born again…no ‘popping’ the fly off the water. Continue this until you have fished the run out. At this point you can change flies or change tactics. If you were fishing a dry fly you might switch to a nymph. If you were fishing a searching/attractor pattern try a more realistic pattern. As a last resort I have found running a nymph or wet fly through the run. It always surprises me when this works but it works nonetheless.

2. You are downstream of a short run and a long deep pool. You want to present to the active fish in the current upstream of the pool first but you don’t want to spook the fish (who may or may not be active) in the pool.

Well work the edge first, you might pick off a fish that would have been spooked by putting a 30’ cast right down the center of the pool. (Another no no by the way). Next you want to go after the fish situation in, around and below the current. Again I will mention the curve casts from last issue. Right and left curve casts will allow you to place your fly in the current while keeping your line away from being over fish (known as ‘lining’ the fish).

The deep pool below the rapids is also a great place to use a sink tip or full sink line. Getting the fly down in a more natural way (floating lines tend to ‘hang’ flies). And a sinking line with an un-weighted fly can be even more natural looking

3. An interesting situation happened to me the last time I was out fishing. There was a circular pool of still water created by a combination of shore line and weeds. There was an active fish in there but almost any fly plopped in there would have put it down. I couldn’t get close enough, without spooking it, to find out what it was feeding on but from the swirls I could tell it was emergers of some kind. So I borrowed a tactic I explore in a past article on lake fishing. I waited till fish rose again and tossed an emerger pattern to the side of the ring. Just like in the aforementioned lake situation the fish didn’t go back to a ‘lie’ it hit the fly.

4. One of the toughest situations is the backwash or whirlpool effect created when there is a fairly fast main current and then water circling back to shore and back out again. With out a doubt these can be dynamite places to find fish but can be a real challenge for fly fishers to catch these fish.

We have discussed the curve casts but they tend to work better when you are up or down stream of these situations. But what if you are beside the backwash? Well I submit that line mending is the way to go here.

There are 2 basic line mends.

(A) On the water mends like the upstream, downstream mends and the inside and outside mends (which we will use here)

(B) Aerial mends which are just like they sound; mends in the line made while the line is still in the air. These can be of the same variations as the on the water mends.

So in one instance I cast to the far edge of the back wash putting in a huge aerial outside mend. So rather than just casting at the target and having the current yank the fly away I have the fly moving toward the desired target. With some on the water mends I can pull the fly back and then re-enter the feeding ‘zone’.

The allure of rivers, for me, are the puzzles and problems I encounter while fly fishing them. Do I go deep, are the fish here or there, what are they feeding on, etc? I have found while the fishing in rivers can be more challenging on one hand the fish seem to be less sensitive to weather changes verse their lake living cousins. Going deep in a lake can mean ‘out of reach’ to most fly fishers while the same concept in rivers merely means an adjustment of tactics. Do I still fish lakes? I have 3 float tubes but rivers are my first love and we know how important that can be.