A Mid-Summer Night's Dream

On The Dark Side of Brown Trout Fishing
By Mike Robertson , Canadian Field Editor

I love to fish for massive browns. It’s the primary variety of trout I like to target. Why? Because they are the hardest to catch and they are, in my experience, the smartest of all trout. By day, they are extremely wary. Their eyesight is unsurpassed, among trout. I tell you, there’s no greater satisfaction than landing a really big one.

When the sun goes down and most people go to bed, that’s when I want to be on the water. It’s the perfect time to go after a truly massive brown trout. It’s when the river takes on a different kind of life. The rush of water is louder (because you have to listen to it to tell where you are). Of the many night sounds, the one you tune into is that of the rise and sometimes splash of an actively feeding trout. You can tell when they’re chasing minnows. It’s a clumsy way of fishing, at best, but there’s no greater excitement than the anticipation of what you might catch.

Browns are nocturnal by nature. Larger browns feed when the sun goes down and continue feeding all night long. Once your nerves settle and the edginess subsides, you concentrate on the task at hand—casting to large brown trout by moonlight and sometimes in pitch black. But in the last case, you’d better know your water.

Studies over the last 15 years have shown what some fishermen have long known. Trophy class browns feed at night. Biologists radio-tracking 20-inch plus browns found they spent most of their daylight time in cover. Types of cover were log jams, under-cut banks and river rocks large enough to hide them. But after sunset, these same trout became active predators on the prowl.

Research has shown that hungry browns after dark will sometimes cruise for miles, picking up crawfish, nymphs, minnows, small suckers and the fry of game fish, including their own. They’ll even take mice off the surface because basically they’ll eat anything they can wrap their lips around.

So as summer approaches faintly on the late winter horizon, I anticipate a mid-summer night’s dream: catching a large brown at night.

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A Brown of the Bow

The following story is not mine. It was written by and belongs to Mike Robertson of Calgary, Alberta. It's a brief tale about catching brown trout on the Bow River, and he gives us proof in this photo, taken by one of his friends. I've re-posted it here with his permission. To visit his site, click here.

A Brown of the Bow

By Mike Roberston, Calgary, Alberta

The alarm goes off and I jump out of bed. It’s time to go fishing again, my friends. I can’t wait. I turn off the alarm and hear that glorious morning sound of birds chirping. I wipe the cob webs from my eyes. My heart begins to race in anticipation of the day ahead.

As I step out of my truck on the banks of the Bow River, I flush a gold-breasted pheasant. It flies desperately for cover and I smile. “Nothing for you to worry about,” I tell the bird. “I’m here for the fish.”

I lean over my tackle box to tie on my first choice, a shiny gold Minnow Spinner. It’s so bright in the sun that it causes me to squint. I look up into the sky. It’s close to noon now. I’m eager to get on with the fishing.

The water is clear blue, almost ice blue, yet I am alone. There is no one around but me and some large brown trout swimming over the rocks. I cast my selection slightly upstream and allow it to sink as it swings down with the current. Anticipation of that first fish is almost unbearable at this point.

I look up to the crystal sky, blue against the backdrop of Canadian Rockies. I am happy that I’m a fisherman and have this great escape in my life free from the fast-paced hustle of city life.

Carefully, I work my offering to tantalize the big brown I imagine lying in wait underneath the surface.

As the lure tumbles over the bottom of the Bow, I cannot help but think this is where I am meant to be. Slowly I retrieve the spinner all the way back to shore and there is no trout on the end of the line.

I shrug and cast again. The spinner drops into the water, swings, takes up motion and WHAM, I’m fast into a monster brown. The line screams out of my reel and I might have lost him, but my Berkley XT monofilament is stronger than him. He bulldogs his way to the middle of the river, but I hold him.

Just as I think he’s going to come in, he turns to ride the current downstream. My rod bends sharply to his effort, but I won’t give in. Slowly I gain the upper hand. The fight is honest and pure and equal for a time, then he comes to the bank and is mine.

This guy was one tough customer. I kneel down beside him in the flowing water to administer some first aid to my new friend. I ask for the forceps but there’s no nurse around. He’s not a very good patient and won’t lie still; but I gently work the hook from his mouth.

That brown wasn’t the one in the photograph. I released him into the river without a picture. But he was just like the one you see in the photograph. Yes, I was meant to be there. Oh, the fun of it! There’s nothing in all the world like trout fishing on the Bow.

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Waiting

Winter is a long wait by the time we get near the end of January. Obviously I'm no ski bum. I find various ways to while away the time waiting for scenes like this.

The photo is Caribou Creek, which flows into the upper end of Priest Lake in North Idaho. Good things happen on a freestone like this.

The water's a little high for wading in this photo. But the trout are there. High water is a time for spinners, crank bait and streamers. I've caught good trout, strong trout in currents like that. It's hard to get around but where you can you're likely going to tie into a memory or two.

Otherwise, you just tie flies, take the dog out for a walk, fiddle with your gear--things like that. It's a waiting time, this winter stuff. Some guys go ice fishing, I probably will too, but looking through old photos is another way of getting there outside of time.

A Fluke

Fishing fever generally sets in during the winter. I think this is true for every honest fisherman and the women too who fish. I think it's true for the dishonest too, who fish. When we've had just about enough snow to start our own ski resort, that's when it happens. It just comes on you. Symptoms are a far away look, drifting thoughts, twitching in the fingers, and even rod rage.

About the only way one can handle this disease is to get out into the outdoors and approach some sort of water with life in it. I did that just this day. But because I didn't have a license yet and because I'm on the honest side of the pendulum, I took my dog instead of a fishing rod.

I drove out to Cocollala Lake south of Sandpoint (North Idaho) to see what I could see. I'd spotted people fishing the ice there on many occasions and new I'd likely find someone wrestling with the same fever; so that's where I went.

Don't worry, I was armed with a long-haired Chihuaha named Bijou. He's a bird, lap, huntin', walkin' dog and you wouldn't want to approach my pickup if I left him in there for some reason.

We dropped down over the embankment, slid down an icy snow path to the lake shore and walked out to three unsuspecting but quite accommodating sportsman who suffered much the same as me.

They were catching perch as Bijou and I neared them and one of the men had a couple of pan-sized trout in his bucket. But they were releasing the perch. That seemed unusual so as they warmed up to me, I asked why. The first one I saw up close had black spots on its belly so I asked about that and the man told me it was Black Spot, marks left by a parasite that enters a fish through its skin and later becomes a flatworm.

I stayed for quite a while. The fact is I made friends with these three men. I took some photographs and they gave me a couple of the perch to take home. Not that I wanted to eat the flesh of wormed fish, but because I wanted to dissect them and see for myself what kind of damage the worms did.

I photographed the flesh and looked through the semi-transparent meat for worms but found none. You can see a black spot in the background on the inside of the filleted skin. But there were no worms or parasitic eggs or larva that I could detect visible in or on any of the meat or skin. The flesh looked okay to me, though I wasn't yet confident about eating it.

I learned several things worth noting. First, according to every source I looked into, if the fish were cooked properly, the larva or worms in any stage would die in the heat. So it appeared safe to eat them. The flat worm in adult stage is called a fluke. In this case, Black Spot Fluke is a liver flatworm. Once I learned that, I opened up the second fish and checked it's liver. Sure enough, the liver did not look healthy and I believe that yellow portion lying on the knife blade is the culprit that did the damage. This fish's liver was seriously damaged, not firm at all.

Secondly, I learned there were varieties of the same called Yellow Spot and White Spot usually seen on the liver of an opened fish. The black spots on this perch are the repair marks where the perch's immune system patched up the microsoopic entry point of entering larvae. Flatworms, like tapeworms, I found have an amazingly complex life cycle.

Who knows what's out there? I fished for half my life not realizing any of this. But I'm clear now, I won't make sushi from freshwater fish, especially if I find marks on the skin such as those you see on the perch above.

That's my first entry. Come back for recipes, tales and some true adventure. I'll even teach a few fly-tying lessons as time goes by. Aaah! I feel better already! I guess I broke the ice on this thing called fishing fever.