The gist to river dry fly fishing lies in rise. Here, angler waits patiently for a rise to begin before he or she starts to fish. And art comes in persuading a particular trout to take your artifical pattern among a host of natural flies.

Rise forms vary widely from hour-to hour and river-to river. From way a trout breaks surface (a rise), an experienced angler can tell how and what trout feeds.

The classic rise is when a series of concentric rings fan out on surface as trout confidently engulfs fly as it drifts past.

Trouts do not rise vertically in water, instead they drift back on current to intercept fly. The trout will then return to its station in stream, usually inbetween weed beds on a shallow gravel run, under a bridge, overhanging tree or in a hatch pool, to wait for next free meal.

Other rises includes:

Nebbing rise occurs when trout pushes its nose right out of water as heavy hatches of flies hover over its head.

The second method that works really well for me is drift fishing. Lets start by explaining how drifting works. It’s really pretty simple: you cast out bait and drag it behind or from side of your boat while wind pushes you along.

Where to Fish

The majority of Cat-men that I know all use same rig, although their tackle will differ from one guy to next. Whatever tackle they use, they are all dragging some kind of bait on bottom. The big difference between most drifters and myself, however, is that I usually do not drift in water any shallower than 30 feet deep while most others like to fish much shallower, such as 10-20 feet deep.

The shallow waters of most lakes contain a few big fish and lots of little ones resulting in lots of action, but not too many that will test your string. I have said before that Blue Cats can and will live and feed in deep water. My best day of drifting, as far as numbers of fish weighing between 3-20 lbs. goes, occurred last December. In one drift I caught and released 47 Blue Cats. These fish all came off of a huge flat that runs parallel to main river channel with an average depth of 45 ft. Its surface has a few small humps and a couple of old ditches running across it. People drive by me and look in disbelief when they see me drifting in 30 to 50 ft of water, but when that fish locator shows big fish marks on bottom at those kind of depths I have a pretty good idea of what’s down there.

Not all lakes are as easy to drift: some have gobs of timber and some have tons of rock on bottom. The best lakes I have found have had some silting or massive mud flats that were old fields at one time. Simple structures like old ditches that carve across mud flats give Blue Cats a place to ambush their prey and might give them a little relief in water column when water is at its coldest or warmest. Look at these flats from different angles and ask yourself, “How does bank look?” Could surface under water look similar to structures above water? Chances are that it will be pretty close.

These ideas are not really new. Bass and Walleye fishermen all over U.S. use land structures to locate their fish and when it comes to locating these structures, fish locators are very valuable tools. My opinion is that you get what you pay for with electronics, but if you can find shad or baitfish with your locator as well as see big fish marks, that’s all you need.

Catchin’ Big Cats