Looking for Mr. Good Brown

A collection of legendary north country fishing talent plied the waters of the Connecticut River yesterday in search of one fish, a brown trout of titanic dimensions said to roam these depths, using techniques and equipment reminiscent of a deep sea fishing expedition. Were they successful? Read on friends …

Six weight rods, heavy sinking lines and big articulated streamers were the order of the day, along with a few cigars and copious amounts of Jack Daniels (not really).

While things got off to somewhat of a slow start in the early morning sunshine and heat, we started to “move fish” by late morning / early afternoon as the skies clouded over. “Move fish” merely means getting fish interested in your fly, sometimes to take it as food and sometimes as a victim of territorial aggression.

Fishing for big trout is tough enough, but we had the deck stacked against us even more – the river is low right now, perhaps the lowest we have ever seen it at this point in the season, so the fish tend to be wary and easily spooked by our presence.

“Ultra stealth” was the mantra for our boat all day long, which is sometimes tough to do when you’re fending off the slings and arrows of your fellow anglers. We had a rollicking good time, and I’m sure that contributed to our fishing success.

We found out several times just how tough some of these fish can be when we encountered pods of rising fish that would suddenly go deep when our boat came within 30 feet or so of them. Jon and I transitioned over to dry fly presentations when the urge to catch them became unbearable, with some success. As you would expect, 6X leader and size 18 – 20 flies were pretty much a must for dealing with these fish.

Chuck, dedicated streamer fisherman that he is, just could not break down to pursue those rising trout. He prefers trolling the depths for monster brown trout exclusively, and our sojourns in to dry fly fishing gave Chuck plenty of time to rifle through his streamer fly box the way a teenager does when he finds his father’s collection of Playboys for the first time. He was giddy.

So, you may ask how exactly were we trying to catch big fish? The plan was pretty simple – cast your heavily weighted fly toward the banks of the river or any structure, with a cast directly perpendicular to the boat or even upstream of the boat.  Strip the streamer quickly toward the boat, in the manner of a panicked bait fish, and hopefully a big fish would get interested.

While I witnessed a pretty good fish lunge at my upstream presentation as I retrieved it through a small drop off, Chuck had the first encounter with what could be considered a monster a little while later. The boil of a big fish moving on a fly is unmistakable, and though it resisted actually taking the fly, our boat understandably came to life with the knowledge that “something big there lurks”.

Chuck would briefly hook another big fish a little while later on his articulated Zoo Cougar, but that one escaped to the depths. Chuck took it well – with a bellow of despair and venomous self loathing. A few soothing words from Jon and I set him on the straight and narrow and he was casting with fervor shortly thereafter.

We had a couple more good rolls on our casts, but, alas, no big fish were brought to the boat. We did educate quite a few smaller ones however, so the day was not a bust by any means.

Fishing like this is most akin to hunting – spending lots of time on the water and learning it intimately and trying to understand why a big trout calls a particular piece of the river his home.  We’ll have to be content with knowing that they’re there and I would like to be there when we actually boat one of them. Patience … and Ben Gay.