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 New England Trout Fishing: Red Ant Flies Saved The Day
Posted by nick-c (3260 reads)
I hit a western New England River that I hadn’t fished for a few years but have been revisiting again this summer. I had a buddy from upstate NY meet me on the river and we were on the water at 5:00 am for the trico hatch. But the weather, although sunny, was cold. No tricos. Being from Maine and partial to fly fishing with streamers I threw on a marabou grey ghost and started getting some lookers and takers. The best part about this river on this day was that it was super clean and the flow was at 260 cfs. So, I could see the trout chase and take my flies. My friend doesn’t nymph or streamer fish, and we weren’t thinking well as to what the fish were taking when they were porpoising all around us. We knew it was subsurface activity but we weren’t reasoning and being smart. The sun light began to hit the water and the streamer wasn’t working as effectively as it had been. I did manage to stick a huge brown on 6x that I fought for about 15 minutes but my buddy Jim couldn’t net the fish and it broke off. We later found out that caddis pupae would have quadrupled our hit rate. Then I caught another fish and my camera was broken. Jim kept missing fish. Things really seemed to be conspiring against us. Then the wind picked up and we figured, “what the heck … let’s try some terrestrials.” I had good luck at first with a hopper, and Jim started hammering trout on a red ant. I started missing fish and we laughingly switched positions in the luck category. He picked up a nice brown and rainbow trout. We saw, and lost many more really nice fish. We are busy tying some zonkers for the early am, and baetis for the Sept - Oct hatch and will be hitting the river again very soon. As from all reports the river is fishing really well and 3-5 lb brown trout are common ! As we wrapped up the
day, we stood on the bank which actually was a 20 foot cliff, and we could see clearly in the water and pick out many fish in holding spots. Some were huge! The weather was 65 and sunny with a breeze, and we couldn’t ask for a better day.
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Re: New England Trout: Red Ants Saved The Day
by jeremy http://www.fliesandfins.com | | nick ---- great read, glad to see you are getting chances to spend more time on the water .... i haven't fished ant patterns all that much, but the few times i have .. it has been during times when the trout are very picky ..... and red/cinnamon ants and black ants and beattles too have sometimes saved the day ..... what size were the ants you were fishing ... just red???? anyway, hopefully i get a chance to steelhead fish with you and jim this season .... pm me or call me and let me know the dates you guys are gonna hit the great lakes this fall for the steelhead ... cya .. |
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Re: New England Trout: Red Ants Saved The Day
by greg http://www.fliesandfins.com | | Nice fish Nick, I was on Henry's Fork several years ago, the water was high and to make it worse you could see huge fish all around your feet but nothing rising. I tied on a red ant and caught a much smaller version of the bottom dwellers but I had bragging rights for the day. |
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Re: New England Trout: Red Ants Saved The Day
by flyaddict http://www.flyaddict.com | Any chance you want to share the river name? Looks familiar..like my home water. If not I understand.
Nice fish by the way. |
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