Slappin Wooley Buggers

If you want to catch trout you need a delicate presentation / you need to be careful wading / you need to have drag free floats / you can't repeatedly cast over skittish fish & every thing needs to look natural...

Bull -

 

When the season is right, just grab a bugger and slap it just above the tail of any pool or across the stream in almost any rock grotto (outcrop) and bang, fish on... In the next few weeks as the days shorten the fish will be very aggressive and on the feed, so get em' while they are hot. But bring your waders b/c unfortunately it seems that here in the northeast at least, the season has ended for wet wading (it is just to numbing).

 

Another hot spot is the base of a waterfall or decent cascade. Try to get the bugger (muddler) as close to the falls (the churn) as possible. Let the fly swing into the deepest part of the pool, a steady slow swing should do it. I caught one of the best brookie of the year this past weekend, with a mouth that could eat an apple and all the fall color you could want.

The single biggest square tail i have ever taken was at this time of year (not with a bugger but with a muddler). I slapped the most skittish pool and watched this goliath rise, look and then pass on my fly. Generally once this occurs your chances reduce to about zero over the next few casts but on the 3rd pass he was alert and followed the fly and with a pounce was on it. The water was low & clear so i watched the entire drama unfold and once hooked i naturally assumed i would never be able to hold or land such a fish so the pressure was off me and in time he came to hand. Imposable size for such water and that he could not break me off or get away made this all the more magic.

For a short while about 6 seconds i thought about keeping him for dinner or even mounting him but then realized he / she? would be the main source of new fish in this entire river providing 10 or 100 times as many eggs as a more  typical brookie and it was really not that hard to let her go. I do wish i had a camera b/c no one would believe this was a native from this water.

Get out of here & go fishing...