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Trout Night Fishing Tactics. Night Matching for "Off" Days.
"Reading Water" the natural divisions of a stream into dry and wet fly water will be fully considered. Here the subject is only touched upon briefly as it affects night matching. Night Matching for "Off" Days Let's turn back to river night life to see why that Caddis Bucktail in a size 8 proved effective when careful matching of the hatch was not productive. "A river at any given time is the sum total of its past twenty-four hours of activity." Remember? Your angling must not only touch present activity, but past activity as well. Each hour of the past twenty-four has some influence on your quarry's response to your offering. Quite often, past activity is much more profitable to match than the activity presently occurring on the stream as you fish. So, as a broad basis for matching, examine carefully all perti nent factors of the past twenty-four hours, especially when present hatches are not getting any response. A full moon was riding the June sky the night before I came on the river. That meant a lot of nocturnal insects terrestrials for the most part were coming into the river without rhyme or reason brown moths, white moths, crane flies, and ants such as you see around porch and street lights on warm evenings. These big, clumsy night visitors seldom come down to the sur face with any delicacy. Instead, the moonstruck creatures hit the water with plenty of disturbance. They have a ready reception from the truly large trout which tend to nocturnal feeding. After night feeding, these large trout tend to become dormant while the sun is on the water. Even a minor hatch will not greatly interest them. But they do retain the memory of that night feeding, and it is here that you have some chance of touching them to activity during the daylight hours. Take that large-size Caddis Bucktail I was using. Obviously, the fish came to it because it was associated with their night feeding. The parts of my matching which touched upon night feeding were the size of the pattern used, the color of the pattern, and the presen tation. The importance of each segment of the matching is not in the order I have set down, but is about equally divided. My fly hit the surface with a disturbance which imitated the larger nocturnal insects. By fishing upstream and getting a deep drift, I touched upon another important matching factor: once they hit the surface, most nocturnal insects are trapped by the current and carried under, especially in the wet fly water of a stream. At first thought it would seem that not enough nocturnal insects would come into a stream to measurably affect fishing next day. But one must remember the myriad insects attracted by street and porch lights on warm evenings. Stars and moonlight shining on those trout pools have the same effect on the night fliers, and so does the scintillation of broken water on the riffles. Once, while fishing Rogue River, I had an "off" day. I spent a lot of valuable angling time trying for a careful matching of some small dark midges presently over the water. Experience with night match ing by this time had taught me the futility of such an undertaking, but angling tradition is hard to down. Besides, those midges were attracting some attention from the lesser trout in the shallows. In the main holding water, however, where one expected to find a worth-while trout, there was no sign of interest. I fished the hatch for the better part of two morning hours before abandoning it. A good rule concerning any daytime hatch is to watch for the fish activity it attracts. Does the hatch have any attraction for a trout or bass you would like to creel, or is it attracting only the smaller fish life? Sometimes it is very worth while to match a midge hatch, such as I fished over on the Rogue River. At other times, when those hatches are not attractive, night matching is definitely indicated. A half moon was riding the mid-July night sky that time I fished the Rogue, and a White Miller fly pattern proved to be the magic which brought those famous riffles to life. This pattern, in outline, has much in common with a Caddis Bucktail, when both are tied on the same size hook. I cast up and quartering across the riffles, allowing my fly to come down without drag, deep through the feeding channels. I touched only those sections which carried the stream bounty well under the surface, because I was fishing my pattern wet. At the end of a very difficult day, I had creeled six trout ranging from 12 to 15 inches in length. Another lesson on the importance of night matching occurred while I was fishing Oregon's famed McKenzie River. There was no hatch over the water. The river, running clear and low, showed no activity whatsoever that late August day. The special dry fly patterns associated with the McKenzie beguiled me for two or three hours of morning fishing. Eventually I had these and several other favorite patterns tested and found wanting. So it was back to night matching if I was to take any fish. Several patterns were indicated for this late-season fishing Moths, Millers, and Ants the most consistent producer being the Black Ant. There are several variations of this pattern, but the one I used is fairly representative: black, fairly full body, no wings, black tail, soft black hackle in the wet fly version, stiff black hackle when tied dry. The head of the fly is built up of black tying thread, then lacquered to give it a gloss. The Black Ant pattern is one of the exceptions to a large size fly for night matching. A number 10 size hook is amply large. Crane flies would be another exception if it were profitable to imitate them. But when crane flies are abroad at night, so many other more I'm portant nocturnals are on the wing that it is best to match the larger night fliers. I dropped my Black Ant pattern near a huge boulder which held a steady shoulder against the current at the head of the riffle. It was taken on first cast by a 14-inch McKenzie rainbow. Three casts later I got a repeat performance, creeling a 16-inch trout. This last trout was well rounded, so I opened him up to examine stomach contents against my successful pattern. A half handful of black winged ants fell out. They were well digested, indicating that the flight had taken place several hours previously, probably in the early evening before the cooling hours discouraged such nocturnal activity. I took seven trout that morning. Working downstream, I began to draw blanks on promising water with my Black Ant pattern. But the occurrence wasn't so unusual when the obvious answer was found that I had touched upon a very localized ant flight. My Black Ant pattern had been effective within the confines of that flight. I don't know how far it extended upstream, but I certainly outlined its downstream limits. A nondescript fly of a type which the English call "insects" put my afternoon fishing back on a paying basis, giving me three more trout which I carefully released. This pattern has nothing more than a natural red hackle, tied wet, a full, brown chenille body, and a size 10 hook. It is a very simple fly, but very much like any number of night fliers full bodied and a bit sluggish in the water. This is always an essential in any fly pattern when you are night matching. Basically speaking, all good trout waters have three things in common. The foremost is security., then food, followed closely by comfort. Examine any stream with these three factors in mind, and when you come to a piece of water having them you have found the most productive place for your flies. The characteristics of water which produce these favored factors are very diverse. Eugene Burns, in his excellent book, Advanced Fly Fishing, has a very pertinent chapter on stream flow. The gist of this chapter is that slow, comfortable water is found at the bottom and edges of a stream other factors being equal. The great est current velocity is near the center of the stream, about halfway to the bottom. Slow water is comfortable water and is preferred by the fish. Here you will find your big trout and bass. Trout lying in this slowed section of a stream need make but little effort to maintain their position. When stream bounty is carried down by the current, they are in position to intercept it without trouble. In this slowed water, they take up positions beside sunken logs or beneath cut banks out of the main suck of the current. How far the fish will move out of their favorable, comfortable positions to take a fly is conditioned by the time of day and by the problem of security. If they would have to move out into an exposed position to pick up a tidbit after the sun is on the water, the offering may be rejected. So, as the day advances, there is a drawing in of the distance within which they might be enticed with a fly. The produc tive water is reduced in area. In mid-day fishing, your fly must be delivered more closely to the trout on station than would be the case in the morning or evening. Investigations show that very large fish of any species confine their active feeding almost exclusively to late evening, night, and early morning. It takes a very large, attractive hatch to touch off an active feeding period in mid-day. There are exceptions, however, to the basic idea that all com fortable water is found near the edges of a stream and along the bottom. In fact, the exceptions are numerous. Examined closely, stream flowage has infinite differences, even within the confines of one pool Slow and comfortable water is not invariably close to the shores or the bottom. If the current turns down in one spot, it will just as surely surface farther downstream. If there is a tendency for stream bounty to be carried deep here, sucked under and forced toward the bottom, there will surely be another portion of the stream farther along where it will surface and be carried close to the top. Water is twisted and turned in many different directions, and trout respond to its vagaries in many different ways.
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