The Hold 'Em Hole

Asher and I had caught a half a dozen or so trout in a half hour or so and had missed several others, so action had been decent. The hole he is fishing in the picture above made the afternoon, though.

We'd make a couple of downstream casts and had worked our baits back through the current without bites when I cast my Road Runner Marabou downstream and across the current, let the lure sink in the eddy until it caught the current, and then held it still while it swang out into the current. I was holding the rod tip motionless when a fish smashed my lure. I battled what I thought to be a really big fish initially because of the current and landed a solid rainbow.

After releasing that fish, I told Asher that I hadn't been working my lure when that fish hit and then repeated the cast to demonstrate. Just like it was scripted, as I told him I was "just letting it swing out into the current like this" another trout slammed my bait in the same place.

As you might guess, I hadn't even landed my fish yet when Asher mimicked the cast with a Lindy Watsit Grub, and before long he was fighting a trout of his own. And so it went. I think we ended up catching releasing nine from that run before they finally quite biting.

We fished a bit farther downstream and had a couple of other strikes, but the afternoon was fading so we soon had to call it an afternoon and begin walking toward the car. I'm curious now whether the fish were just ridiculously wadded up in that one hole or whether we simply didn't discover the right "non-presentation" until we got to that particular hole. I guess we'll never know!

Draw of the Docks

I've just returned from Rend Lake Resort in Illinois, where I spent three fun and productive days catching crappie and taking photos with pros from B'n'M Poles. While I was there, I couldn't help but notice that there were ALWAYS anglers on every set of docks at the resort -- and that someone on any given dock usually had a fish on the line. They weren't big fish, necessarily, but everyone seemed to be catching their share. They were out there at first light, even it was 35 degrees outside, and they remained there when the sun went down.

Eventually I couldn't stand it.

Although I'd probably caught a 100 fish by the time we wrapped up our time on the water on day 3 and I had been out in boats fishing some of the lake's best spots with top pros, the allure of the simple dock fishing became more than I could resist. An hour or so before sunset on Day 3 I grabbed a B'n'M jig pole, tied a tandem rig with an Ugly Bug and a Road Runner Original Marabou, stuck a couple of spare lures in my sweatshirt pocket, and walked down to the dock behind my room.

It wasn't long before I was in on the catching game, and while my fish were no bigger than most others I'd seen, the basic dock fishing with a single pole in hand was every big as fun as it looked. I caught about 10 crappie before returning to my room, content and ready to begin packing my gear for the drive home.

Swinging Road Road Runners

Often I drift a Road Runner, casting upstream, allowing the lure to tumble in the current, and using the rod and reel only to keep the bait from dragging bottom too much and to pull it a bit and engage the blades. Other times, I cast mostly cross-current and simply reel or work the bait with slight hops and drops. Occasionally I let the bait swing downstream, in the current. I always experiment early in the day, and let the trout decide, and this week they absolutely wanted the downstream swing.

The swinging approach is fun and simple I cast directly across or current or across and slightly downstream, let the bait sink a little on a slack line, and then just flip the bail and hold the rod. The trout hit the bait as is swings downstream or even after it has made the swing and is simply dangling in the current, with the little Road Runner blade just spinning the current. This week, quite a few fish took the bait when it was just hanging. If the bait is hanging in a likely fish-holding area, I'll often twitch the rod a few times to convert watchers into eaters, and then I might reel is slowly upstream.

Streams, of course, are mighty dynamic, and various factors, including the depth of a run, the placement of rocks and the amount of current, dictate how tight I keep the line, how far I let it tumble, how long I leave it hanging and more.

We actually caught at least a few fish presenting our Road Runners pretty much any way they can be worked in a couple of days on the Nantahala River. The swing was the top producer for me, though, and is definitely a presentation that's worth trying if you have not done so.

Thursday Tips: Believe the Fish

When I fish in current with a Road Runner Original Marabou or Pro Marabou 2.0, I almost always let the current do the bulk of the delivery work by casting to the upper ends of runs I want to fish and either twitching the rod as the bait drifts downstream or keeping the rod tip high and reeling just enough to keep the bait from dragging bottom. Not surprisingly, that was how I began fishing my Road Runner this week on the Nantahala River.

Sometimes I'll let the lure drift past my position and then tighten the line and let it swing in the current downstream -- and occasionally a trout hits it on the swing. Most days such hits are bonuses and make up a small piece of the action. It took me a while to notice yesterday that most of my strikes were occurring duringdownstream swings and longer to begin shifting the angles of my casts. It took even longer to truly believe the fish about their preferences and to mostly abandon the normally productive upstream casts.

Yesterday's specific presentation isn't as important as the often-stated but too-seldom-followed idea of truly allowing the fish to dictate things like casting anglers, color choices and presentations speeds. I still ended up catching quite a few trout, but I believe I would have caught quite a few more had I done a better job of following advice I sometimes give and often hear stated by pros and guides. It's one thing to listen to the fish. It's another to believe what they tell you and evidence that through the way you present your baits.

Fly-Fishing Alternative for Special-Regs Trout

For starters I should say that I do enjoy fly-fishing, and sometime when I go trout fishing or fish for other species, I tote a long rod. I do not, however, consider a fly-fishing a better, more sporting or purer way to fish for trout. It's simply a different style of fishing and one that can be exceptionally effective when the trout are keying on some kind of hatch or eating a specific type of tiny invertebrate farther down in the water column.

I believe when people see "single hook artificial lures only"in a stream's regulations they tend to read that as "fly-fishing only," and that idea is re-enforced by the fact that fly anglers generally make up the bulk of the crowd on these waters. In truth, various lures you can throw with a spinning rod sometimes do extremely well in these waters. The fish see a tremendous number of Hare's Ears, Pheasant Tails and Woolly Buggers, but they don't really see many lures of other kinds.

When spin-fishermen do visit these types of waters, most of them clip two of three points from the treble of a small in-line spinner, which can work really well. My preferred baits, though, are small jigs such as Lindy Watsit Grubs and Fuzz-E Grubs, Road Runner Marabous and small plugs. The video above talks about the Road Runner Marabou. A very recent blog told of the whopper brown trout that took a liking to Nathaniel's Tracdown Minnow.

Few anglers use minnow- or crawfish-imitating hard baits because the lures come equipped with twin treble hooks and the hooks are too small to trim to a single point as is done with in-line spinners. I remove both trebles and replace the back one with a little larger single hook. For Rebel Teeny-Wee Crawfish or Tracdown Minnows, which are about 2 inches long, I like a No. 4 or 6 Daiichi Bleeding Bait Octopus Hook.

Try these offerings next time you see "single hook artificial lures" in the regs and see how they work for you!