The Value of Experience

Early in my fly fishing career, a friend told me that the best way to learn how to fish was to pick one stream, and fish it a lot. Learn it in high water, and low....in all seasons. It seemed like good advice, but I didn't realize how valuable it was until followed it (more by accident than design).

There's a small WTS which is one of the closest to my home in Trenton (I have to drive an hour to find any wild trout). It also happens to be 5 minutes from my mom's house.

So I've probably fished it 100 times over the past few years... In all seasons except the deepest part of winter.

At this point, I've got a very good idea about the structure of every pocket that holds fish. I've fished it in low water, so I know what the bottom looks like even when I can't see it.

On Saturday I hit this same stream, two weeks after I'd fished it last. Two weeks ago, it took me an hour or so to figure out that I needed to be nymphing. Today, I started with a nymph, and picked up two nice fish on the first run.

I was actually a little surprised, because the water was fairly high and running pretty fast. But both fish were caught in the relatively fast moving water.

I "prospected" a number of other likely places that usually hold fish. To no avail. Every fish I caught, and it was maybe 5 in the first 45 minutes or so, was in a fast moving run.

It wasn't easy fishing. The takes were subtle, even in the current. But it was fun. And once I concentrated ONLY on the runs it was constantly rewarding. The only issue was that this stream doesn't have all that many runs with the right characteristics... I covered about a mile of stream frontage in less than 3 hours. Generally, I knew exactly the next spot I would fish before I left the previous spot.

Towards the end, I'd caught a dozen or so nice fish, and missed a few others. One perhaps the largest fish I'd ever seen on this stream...it took my fly, rolled, and got off. I saw it's back, broad and black. I presume an old brown...maybe 14"...a giant on this stream.

As I was nearly done, a man about my age walked by in fly fishing gear. He had a 9' rod, a dead give away he didn't fish this stream very often. He asked how I'd done...I told him (actually said I'd caught about half what I had). He said, "Wow, it's good to hear they're in here." He'd caught one during the same time I'd been fishing...in fact had been fishing ahead of me, but covered perhaps 1/4 the frontage I had over the same time period.

So, obviously, he'd spent a lot of time exploring water that wasn't going to pay off. And apparently he'd missed the structures where I was pulling out nice fish, because he'd covered water where I was still catching.

It helps to know a stream really, really well.