Reverse Strategy

When fishing is difficult, I like to keep my mind open and consider any patterns of trout behavior I encounter. I note what I find on the rivers on any given day and look to repeat my hard-won successes when similar situations occur. Sometimes though, it is easy to fall into a pattern myself.

I was fishing yesterday afternoon, looking to find a good trout or two hunting once again. The water conditions looked very favorable, and there were periodic strong winds as little storms in waiting wandered around the Catskills looking to join forces as thunderstorms like the one that awakened us at four this morning. It was hot too, when that wind was not blowing, and that tends to be a recipe for terrestrials.

I failed to move a single trout, though I did see one good rise behind my shoulder in a piece of water I had fished very thoroughly a few minutes earlier. I cannot say whether that trout had been sitting there throughout, or if he was a traveler. I do know that he paid no attention to a number of casts that I immediately put over him.

Wading downstream in the heat, it occurred to me that those wonderfully educated Catskill trout might be patterning me. Perhaps they had become accustomed to my approach and tactics. No matter how slow and stealthy my approach, I never fool myself into believing that my quarry doesn’t know I’m there. Sure, I can usually avoid alarming them, but their awareness of their watery realm is sublime.

That was the second time in a couple of days that I had that feeling of being patterned by the trout. I was fishing over a known lie, where a trout had risen softly once or twice, while I watched from a distance. Once I cast to him, he had quietly stopped rising and ignored my careful presentations. On that occasion, I considered that the fish might be getting wise to my tactics and employed a little reverse strategy.

I gave that area a rest and moved carefully away. I fished another spot, one that never seems to hold a fish, and didn’t again on this day. When I returned, I approached as stealthily as I could, and stayed well away from that trout’s lie. When I reached a suitable position, I fished from a completely different angle, with a very long cast and an extended drift. I worked the cover surgically, sending my fly deeper into the money zone with each cast and drift. When I presented my fly to the lie where that earlier riser had been sitting, I extended my float and waited.

I watched that fly drift slowly for a long time. Finally, there was a weak little burble in the film and then a soft little ring. He never knew what hit him! I fought that trout hard to get him free of the cover he had felt so secure within, but I managed it. Once out of his realm, he took to running and spinning the Trutta Perfetta!

I am convinced that the only reason I caught that twenty-inch brown was because I recognized the reason for my failure and changed tactics drastically!