Winter Fly Fishing

By: Aaron Jasper

 

"During the winter when most other people are, gathering around a fire or heading to the slopes you can still find me fly-fishing. For me fly-fishing season never ends. I just adapt to the season and keep on fishing.

Winter fishing requires perseverance. There are days when you will get lots of fish and other days maybe a couple. I am reminded of a winter day out on the Housatonic River in Connecticut. The river was low after a month of very cold weather. The day I fished was the first day of warmer weather. By warm, I mean in the low forties. I had a great day of winter fly-fishing. I caught fourteen beautiful holdover trout. The largest trout was just shy of twenty inches.  The next day I went out under identical conditions to only land four trout. What was odd about this is that I even spent more time fishing and gave it a better effort. Winter fly-fishing can be fickle but the up and down fishing is evenly compensated by the solitude that you will find in the winter on a trout stream.

It really surprises me the amount of people who don’t fish in the winter. I have had some spectacular days in the winter even in some drastic weather conditions. We are lucky to have many clothing manufacturers that have made winter fly fishing a warm and enjoyable experience. With the new thinner and warmer clothing out there on the market winter fly-fishing isn’t just for the brave anymore.

You have to have the right clothing in order to be comfortable. Comfort is very important in order to have an enjoyable outing. If you take my advice on clothing and techniques for winter fishing, you might be able to escape the confines of home even on the coldest of winter days.

Layering up for winter is critical. Remember you can take layers off is you get hot. Once you are dressed and on the stream, it is hard to add new layers. You need to layer up first and prepare for the elements. It is easy to maintain comfort with the proper clothing. I will list and explain the clothing that I wear for my winter fishing. For socks, I wear Simms extreme wading socks. These are the warmest and most comfortable socks on the market today. For my first layer I wear Simms midweight waderwick pants.  These are very thin and provide the first layer on my legs. This layer wicks the moisture away from my body. This also provides me with some extra warmth. This is lightweight layer. Do not be fooled, if worn alone your legs will turn into rocks when wading in water below forty degrees. My next layer of clothing is the Simms guide bib. I know this looks a little dorky but it allows me to stay warm even in the worst of conditions. This piece of clothing has a bib on top, which acts a vest and keeps my upper body warm. The lower section of this garment is comparable to expedition weight and it keeps my legs warm. This double layer on my legs allows me to comfortably stand in the river for hours without getting cold.

My first upper later is a Simms waderwick or under armor short sleeve t-shirt. From here, I wear the Simms rivertek mid weight top. This mid weight top is the most comfortable fishing shirt I have worn yet. This shirt is dries quickly and wicks away any moisture on your upper body.

Once I am dressed, I put on my waders. After I put on my waders and my wading boots Next, I put on my Simms wind stopper DL jacket. This jacket is the greatest. On my trip to Alaska for steelhead last year the weather was horrible, yet I couldn’t even feel it underneath the jacket. I put the jacket on the outside of my waders. Some people think that it is strange that I do this. The jacket of the outside keeps you more comfortable than stuffing all of this clothing on the inside of your waders.  It still jeeps you warm and you have pockets to put your hands in.  The real secret to spending a whole day outside in the cold is to put hand warmers in the pockets of the jacket. The jacket being outside the waders also eliminates another problem that most people have. You won’t be able to wade in too deep. You will get the jacket wet and the hand warmers will be useless.  The part of most people that gets cold in winter fishing for most people is their hands. The hand warmers take away this problem and keep you comfortable. 

Stanley’s ice off paste is another must have for the cold weather fly fisherman. Applying this paste to the rod guides the night before fishing will keep most of the ice off.  Keep in mind that the paste does wear off and you have to re-apply it throughout the day. Ice on the guides can make for a really frustrating day on the stream.

For winter fly-fishing the main technique would have be nymph fishing. Although there are some days where midges can hatch in numbers to bring trout to the surface. More importantly, the nymph fishing would be done with a strike indicator. The trout are often very lethargic in the winter. This lethargy calls for the need to detect very subtle strikes.  Even the slightest strike can go undetected by the best tight line nymph angler.

The next important thing in winter fly-fishing is the fly selection. Winter fly selection is very easy. There are only a few different flies that you need to be successful.  Keep in mind that in the winter on most streams there isn’t much hatching besides midges. This is a time of the year when you have to use flies that are independent of hatching.

If I were on a freestone stream these flies would include scuds, san juan worms, stoneflies and small nymphs that imitate small immature mayfly and caddis fly nymphs that might be getting washed off of rock and in the drift.

On the Housatonic River in Connecticut, which is a freestone stream, there are only three flies that you need to catch trout in the winter. I was tying flies one night at my friend Torrey’s house. I was making the Housatonic sampler. My friend laughed when he looked into the plastic container of about 30 flies. They were eggs, scuds or stoneflies. These flies catch ninety percent of the trout during the winter months. I have had very similar success with these three flies on other freestone streams such as the South Branch of the Raritan and Penns Creek in Pennsylvania.

I was fishing on the South Branch of the Raritan last winter. I was having decent success.  I was catching between five and fifteen trout an outing. I wasn’t very happy with my catch rates. I knew there were a lot of fish that I wasn’t catching.  I stomach pumped one of the trout that I caught because I know I should be doing better. When I pumped the trout it was there that I saw it. Even in this freestone stream, the trout had many large scuds along with a few gray midges in its stomach contents. These were scuds that most of us would not use because they were so large. Some were even a size 12. I went home that night and tied that imitated the larger scuds and went back.

When I went back to the stream, I had new confidence. I caught twice as many trout out of each run that I fished. Here it was that I truly learned how valuable it is in the winter not to match the hatch but to match what is not hatching. 

When fishing on tailwater rivers and spring creeks during the winter I find that midges comprise more of my flies than during the summer months. Always have a large variety of midge larva and pupa when fishing tail waters in the winter. Do not forget the usual assortment of tail water flies. These would be flies that imitate scuds, sow bugs and aquatic worms. The warmer water being released from the bottom of large reservoirs creates ideal conditions for midge hatches. Tailwater rivers offer the best winter fishing conditions. They have tons of food sources that are independent of hatching. Trout in these rives feed year round. Trout in these rivers are spoiled by the amount of food they have available to them. Too many fishermen forget that trout in these environments can eat a steady diet of scuds, sow bugs, and various aquatic worms 365 days a year.

I was fishing the Farmington River in Connecticut last winter with a client. The fishing was fair. When the fishing is a little slow, I like to flip over rocks in the stream and look at debris in the water to see some of the food that might be in the stream. I saw many hellgrammites under the rocks and some that were lodged in the timber that was in the water as well. I tied a very similar pattern on along with my midge larva. What amazed me is that no trout took the hellgrammite. You would figure that a large meal would not go long before being noticed by a hungry trout. The trout still only ate the midge. A mistake that is commonly made by winter fly fisherman it that they see the nymphs on the rocks and think that they are in the drift. The nymphs that you see on the rocks are not necessarily the same food items that are available to the trout. At this time of the year on this river, we know that winter caddis and midges comprise 99.9 percent of the trout’s diet. Understanding what the fish eat in the winter is an important part of the puzzle in winter fly-fishing. A size 12 bead head pheasant tail will likely go unnoticed by the trout because they don’t see anything of that size during that time of the year. A size 20 miracle nymph will draw more strikes because it is a common food item that the trout are seeing.

When winter fly-fishing, remember that the trout’s metabolism is slowed down because of lower water temperatures. Trout are a cold-blooded animal so they need to slow their metabolism down in order to survive. This forces trout to move to different types of water to save energy and winter over. Instead of fishing in the faster water, try looking for edges of current. You will find the trout on the softer side of the current. Look for the glassy slower water within the faster water. This gives you an indication of the friction caused by rocks on the bottom of the stream. This is the water that will hold trout. Focus on the deeper pools. Trout have a tendency to move to slower deeper pools in the winter.

On the Housatonic River in Connecticut we have a saying,” if you find one, you found ten more”. Trout in the winter will often school up and they will be stacked in certain areas. Other sections of stream will almost seem to be void of fish. This past winter my friend Alex and I spent a lot of time experimenting and trying new spots. Many spots would be void of trout. However, when we found trout we caught them in bunches. This would definitely validate the fact that trout school up in the deeper pools during the winter.

When giving winter fishing a try there is no need to be out there at the crack of dawn. Maybe this is why I like fishing in the winter. After working all week sometimes, I like to sleep in. During the winter, the trout are active when we are active. Most winter fishing does not get good until after 10 am. This allows us to get up and get a good breakfast. We can even run a few errands and still get to fish. The window of opportunity is short. The fishing lasts until around three or four in the afternoon. Sunny days are best. This makes the water temperature go up. Even the slightest temperature swing will get the trout feeding. The temperature only needs to go up half a degree to get the fish active. The fish know from conditioning that the window of feeding is very short in the winter. This can make for some very fast cold weather fly-fishing. I have had days in the winter where I will start early. I will have very slow fishing. As soon as the sun comes out for a little and the water warms, it is as if someone flipped a switch. When the temperature heats up the fishing does the same. I have fished for hours in the morning during the winter to get one or two. I have had many afternoons where I have racked them up. If you haven’t figured it out yet… don’t start too early.

Get the right clothing and head out this winter. Armed with the right gear and a few hand warmers your fly-fishing season doesn’t have to end."