Small Stream Trout Fishing Tactics

I used to claim I would rather catch a 12-inch trout on a fly rod than a 20-inch trout any other way. There is a rare satisfaction in hooking a 12-incher on a dry fly, during a hatch of mayflies. Like a lot of fly fishermen who reach purist status, I tended to look on anglers who practiced other forms of fishing as slightly less accomplished than myself–the way, perhaps, a concert violinist might look at a bluegrass fiddler.

It took a windy afternoon in July to bring me to my senses.

Mike McCumby and I were fly fishing the Boardman River near Traverse City, in a stretch famous for browns and brook trout. It was typical July weather: too bright, too hot, and too windy. By mid-afternoon the wind was so strong that our casts either shot down hard on the water or veered straight up into the sky and straightened out behind us in perfect, frozen backcasts. In desperation, we retreated to look for more sheltered water.

A small tributary entered the river nearby. We followed it upstream along old logging trails, walking until the trail disappeared into the ferns in a narrow valley. In that protected valley, on a piece of trout water about as wide as a city sidewalk, it didn’t matter how windy it was out in the open world. The trout were there and they were hungry. Only they were hungry for garden hackle, porkchops–the common earthworm–and hadn’t the slightest interest in our dry flies and artificial nymphs.

We spent the rest of the day stalking along that creek, catching brook trout that averaged barely eight inches long. Catching them made me feel like a kid again. I realized I had been cutting myself off from thoroughly enjoyable possibilities.

I hadn’t fished small creeks in years, not since I was a kid and it seemed the natural thing to do. Kids and creeks are perfect for one another, like kids and puppies. They’re the same scale in size, they even share the same temperament. My mistake was in thinking that when you grow up, you grow out of them.

The truth is, small streams are every bit as interesting and challenging as full-grown rivers. The trout are the same trout you find anywhere, just as spooky and often just as leader-shy. Contrary to a widely held belief, you can’t simply walk up to a small creek, toss in a baithook dressed with a chunk of nightcrawler, and haul out a trout. Most of the time, caution, patience, and attention are required to fool decent-sized trout in streams and creeks.

Trout in small waters survive in an extremely dangerous environment. They pass most of their lives within reach of predators who prowl the banks or perch in branches, waiting for the trout to get careless. As a consequence, stream trout may be more alert to vibrations and shadows than river fish accustomed to the security of deep water.

I’ve watched brook trout in a tiny pool dart for cover when someone approaching the creek was still a hundred feet away. Creeks in lowlands and swamps often flow through ground built on a network of roots that acts like a telegraph system. Any thump or vibration is instantly transmitted to the water and becomes, to the trout, a signal of approaching danger.

In the same way, a shadow thrown suddenly across the water will alarm trout in the entire area. The large ones disappear under cover, the small ones panic and dash up and down the stream, incidentally alerting trout in both directions that danger is near.

The most successful small-stream fishermen I know are as dedicated to their sport as any river or lake fisherman. They might use equipment that would make a dry fly specialist wince, but they use it with skill. They aren’t afraid to crawl on their hands and knees to approach feeding trout, a maneuver that is absolutely necessary on some waters. They get involved in their fishing, give their whole attention to it, and don’t care how it looks or what other people think.

Of course, one of the great advantages to fishing small streams is that other people are seldom around. Even in relatively populous areas, small creeks are seldom crowded. That is partly because it doesn’t take a very long stretch of creek to keep a good angler occupied for a day; also, the small dimensions and closeness of underbrush and trees can give the illusion of isolation, even when there might be another fisherman, or even a busy highway, only a few bends away.

Some days major rivers are much too crowded for my taste, yet even on the busiest days their tributary streams are usually ignored altogether. That isn’t surprising when you consider that for every 10 miles of river there are likely to be 40 or 50 or more miles of tributaries feeding into it.

Most rivers are formed by a system of tributaries as complex as the trunk-branch-twig system of a tree, always with many more twigs and small branches than trunks and primary limbs. The number of trout streams is increased even further by the fact that many rivers too warm, polluted, or blocked by dams to be good trout water are fed by small, spring-fed creeks with excellent trout populations.

The crowds are also kept away by the nature of small streams. I know a couple stretches of creeks that flow through lovely, wide open meadows, where it’s possible to sneak along in the open, casting flies or bait into pools and undercut banks that are absolutely infested with brook trout. Places like that, unfortunately, are rare, and anyone determined to fish only in such idyllic locations better be prepared to do a lot of traveling between casts.

Most small streams flow through tangles of underbrush, are blocked by fallen cedars, and pass through confined valleys choked with amazingly prolific growths of vines, brambles, shrubs, and trees.

Occasionally, you’ll find sections of streams flowing through pines and cedars where the lower branches have died and fallen away, creating a park-like environment where walking is easy and enjoyable. Unfortunately, the walking in such places if often more productive than the fishing. The rule of thumb on small streams is that if it’s easy to get to, it’s not worth getting to. You might catch occasional trout from the deep hole at the culvert next to the road, or in the open stretch in the meadow along the highway, but you can bet if it’s easily accessible it’s been over-fished.

The less accessible areas of small streams also happen to be home to biting and sucking insects, a trout’s best line of defense. A lot of fishermen go after small-stream trout the first couple weekends of trout season–before mosquitoes and black flies hatch–then give up.

For the angler willing to sacrifice a little comfort, those insects are more a boon than an annoyance. For one thing, they keep away the crowds; for another, they are seldom as bad as they seem to the uninitiated. Most of the time a good supply of repellent and clothing that fits snugly at the ankles, sleeves, and collar are enough to keep you fishing in bug season. Black flies seldom hatch in large numbers for more than a few days at a time, usually during the first week or two of warm weather in the spring, and mosquitoes, even when they’re present in swarms, can be kept at bay by regularly re-dosing with repellent.

It’s not enough, usually, to just dunk a worm to catch small-stream trout. Many of the techniques taken for granted on larger waters are just as important on diminutive ones.

It is important, for instance, that bait, fly, or lure enter the water naturally. That isn’t always easy to accomplish when the pool you are trying to drift a worm through is only 16 inches across, in the space between the branches of a fallen tree. It explains why the first cast is so critical in small waters. That initial drift through a pool or into the dark hole beneath a stump may be the only chance you get to put your bait down in a natural way.

As soon as the drift is complete and you reel in, streaking your split-shot, hook, and bait upstream, the game is over with most large, sophisticated trout. They recognize immediately that something is wrong, edge farther back under the bank, and go into a petulant sulk. Approach and presentation are critical. If you aren’t patient and cautious enough to get into a position that allows the first cast to be the best one, then you’re not going to catch as many trout. Simple as that.

The same rule hold true whether you’re using bait, lures, or artificial flies. There are times when flies can be effective, but most streams flow through places where fly casting is impractical. Many times the best you can hope for is room to “dap” a dry fly on a short line, or perhaps to strip out line and let a streamer or weighted nymph work downstream.

On a twisting little creek in a cedar swamp near my home I have sometimes had success letting weighted nymphs drift beneath logs and stumps. And once I spotted a foot-long brown trout finning along the edge of a bed of weeds in a place where a lane between branches made a short backcast possible. I stalked to within 20 feet on my knees, made a cautious backcast, and dropped a #16 Adams a few feet above the trout. He rose without hesitation–one of the most satisfying trout of the season.

But most of the time, on most creeks, the methods that worked when you were a kid still work best: hook, bait, and split-shot. Bait is always a hotly debated subject. Small garden worms or red worms–the livelier the better–are probably the all-time favorite, but nightcrawlers can be deadly. Clark Chapman of Onaway, Michigan, one of the best brook trout anglers I know, fishes almost exclusively with crawlers, and for a very good reason. The waters Clark fishes are inhabited primarily by brook trout, most too small to be legally kept. To prevent hooking and injuring the smaller fish–and to present a more tempting bait to large ones–Clark uses a #6 Carlisle hook threaded through half a nightcrawler, which he allows to drift downstream into deep pools and undercut banks.

Grasshoppers and crickets are popular bait with many fishermen, though they aren’t as easily purchased as worms and nightcrawlers. One dedicated small-creek angler I know lays boards in the field next to his house. Grasshoppers gather beneath them at night for warmth and are there, too cold to escape, when he lifts the boards in the morning. Another swears by “muddlers,” the bottom-hugging sculpins found in many streams. Walking through the center of a creek, he kicks stones to send the minnows darting downstream into his waiting net (this isn’t legal in trout streams in some states).

He fishes the sculpins hooked through the lips on a single hook, behind a small Colorado spinner. Other effective baits include minnows (both live and dead), salmon eggs, hellgrammites, and mayfly larvae–almost any insect or baitfish found in the creeks you fish.

It isn’t difficult to find good trout streams. The chances are, if the rivers in a region are known for trout, there are plenty of good tributaries as well. In unfamiliar territory rely on topographical maps and good county maps to search out creeks. During the summer, when warming water often causes large trout to migrate into small, cold tributaries, the fishing is probably better than on the mainstreams.

Once you’ve found a promising creek, dive into the underbrush, follow the creek for a half mile or more into swamps and thickets, go where the paths fade out and disappear. Ignore the black flies and mosquitoes, appreciating instead that they help keep the crowds away. Then use every strategy you’ve learned on rivers, except be quieter, and more patient, and fish every pool like it holds a trophy.

I admit I have not caught many large trout in creeks. A 15-incher is bragging-size, and I have never landed one as large as the 20-inch brown a friend of mine caught one summer evening from a five-foot-wide creek. But there are other rewards than big fish, not the least of which is learning that bigger is not always better, and that sometimes what we learned as kids is just as valuable as what we learn as adults. Maybe more valuable.

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