Reading Water

Note: I did not write this article, its written by Bryant J. Cochran, Jr.

The trout fisherman must be able to read a stream or river in far more detail than a canoeist, kayaker or rafter. The boat folks can see the current flow and the humps that show where rocks are, they even see the "seams" where currents of different speed run side by side. They would be hard pressed if you asked them to show you where fish might be lying. Simply because they lack detail in their knowledge. A fisherman needs to fully understand the fishes survival needs and behavior patterns in order to properly read a stream. These are the details a fisherman needs to know, that a boater doesn't need or want to know. The subject this series will cover is easier to learn, understand and put to use than the myriad of knots, lines, casting flaws and entomology. Plus it is more entertaining in conversation than entomology, unless you are at a professors cocktail party.

You will learn where to cast along with where not to cast and why. Where to wade and where not to wade so you don't spook the fish and have it running and spreading the alarm to the rest of the fish in the stream. You will be able to go to new waters and fish with confidence, all year long, knowing where the fish will be in any season and any conditions. Your fish location predictions will impress all but the most expert of fishermen. Given a casting technique of accuracy, your catch rate will increase and the size of your catch will increase. You will know why stealth and casting on a dime are so important. This accuracy will be the difference in the number of fish you catch especially when you face a situation where only a few inches of drag-free drift are available. Trout have very narrow feeding lanes and they will not move one extra inch for any reason.

These new skills are essential for success and one of the main areas of knowledge that separate the beginner/intermediate from the expert. As with everything, there will be times when the trout will be anywhere but where you think they should be. In these times - when conditions are just right, what you learn here may not work. When this happens - please be kind in your thoughts of me and my words. Don't forget that we have a help line under Q & A, if you have a problem in the future or present, let me know, I will get the answer to you.

THE TROUT'S WORLD

The brain of a trout is a simple one. It is small and consist of four lobes - two large and two small, these are called ganglion by biologist, they represent a very simple brain. This brain will fit on a quarter and it is primeval. The fact that many fishermen give the trout high marks for intelligence just shows how much they don't know about biology. Simple minds have simple needs. All species of trout have three basic needs not including water, Food, Shelter, and Oxygen. In order to be a sustaining population they need a proper spawning habitat, which is usually the same as their normal living habitat. They also need deeper pools to survive a winter with anchor ice covering the habitat, unless they are in the southern tail waters of America or other countries.

In nature there are seldom any linear relationships. In order for trout to have food, the oxygen levels, water temperatures and nutrient flow, must be adequate to support the lives of the prey organisms which are; insects and their larvae, minnows and other fish, fry and the crustaceans. The trout who limit their diet to minnows, sculpins, crayfish and other trout are sometimes called sharks. The oxygen level is dependent on the water temperature and the amount of surface area that can exchange gas (O2) with the atmosphere. This equates to how much riffled or white water there is on the stream. The pools below a riffle will have a higher O2 content than the pools above the riffle. Shelter means several things to a trout. Protection from predators and protection from the main current, but close enough to feeding lanes in the current so little energy is expended in the gathering of food. This conservation of energy is extremely important to a trout, the less energy spent on feeding the more energy to spend on growth, all trout want to grow larger. When food is plentiful and gathering energy out put is small, a trout can grow at a fast pace. The larger the trout, the better home he can claim for himself.

We know how important a good food supply is but the food supply is intertwined with the need for shelter. A trout needs two types of shelter. First he (or she) needs a territory close to the main current, the current acts like a conveyor belt moving food organisms down the river. This territory will be sheltered from the current and could be a rock, tree branch, a shallow dish in the stream bed, an opening in a moss bed, or any thing else that breaks the current or slows it down. When a feeding shelter is close to or is itself a place to hide from an airborne or land based predator you have found a "prime lie" and a large trout is probably occupying it.

The life of a trout is a harrowing journey through time. As a fry he is hiding in the mossy or grassy shallows, hoping that he will avoid being eaten by birds, a host of land animals or another fish, which could even be his parents. Once he is around five inches long his predator instincts grow and the juvenile seeks deeper water and his own territory. If he finds a really good shelter/territory he may stay there for the rest of his life. More likely he will move as he grows longer, from territory to territory, until he finds a "prime lie" territory to call home. Or he might find a nice deep pool and take up a territory where no predator from above might see him, and move to the shallower feeding lies at night. This leaves the trout with other water dwelling predators as danger to himself. The really deep pools are where you will find the really big "kings of the pools". You will only catch one of these guys if you fish at night, when they move up to feed. These are the world record type fish, and only occasionally are weather conditions right to find them cruising for food in the day light hours. On my home waters the world record brown trout was caught - it weighed in at 40 lbs. 4 oz.. I would not be surprised to hear of one significantly larger being taken in the future, especially from a tail water river like my home waters - the LITTLE RED RIVER and the WHITE RIVER both in Arkansas, USA. A trout likes water with a depth of three feet or more, you can check this by seeing how close you can wade to one that is in a depth of three feet as opposed to one in two feet of water. In a depth of three feet the trout feels safe from land or air predators. The day light hours between and including dawn and dusk is the time period most of us are going to fish. The middle fish are the active ones during this time period and they are the ones we will mostly catch. They will be wary of their surroundings, using all of their senses and their above water window of vision, they will bolt for their predator shelter at the slightest hint of danger, unless they are in the safety zone of three foot or more water depth. And once spooked they will not return to active feeding until they feel safe.

A rivers current determines where the feeding lanes will be. It is the conveyor belt bringing the trout his food. He sits in a protected place, close to the conveyor belt and reaches out to grab the food he wants. He doesn't have to expend a lot of energy to do this and given the opportunity he will spend all of his time in his feeding lane, this is home. He will defend this territory from other trout, but if danger causes him to bolt to his protective lie, a log jam or rock pile, he allows any neighbors to crowd in, fins touching, till the danger has past. Then and only then will the trout return home and begin feeding once more. When a trout is home he is always catchable, because he will be feeding all the time he spends there. All the fisherman has to do is figure out what he is eating and where in the depth range of the stream he is feeding, bottom, middle or surface film. When the fisherman gets all of this information right, he will catch every trout he presents his fly to, provided all the rules and information he gathered are followed. Alas, every fisherman will have days when one bit of information is either lacking or not thought of and the fisherman will go home empty handed.

In the articles to come of this series I will fill the gaps in the knowledge of reading a stream or river. When we are finished you will have the information to know where to cast your fly and have the best chance to have a trout at least see your offering in the right place for the trout to want to eat it. Whether or not he will depends on the correct presentation of the fly. The fly will be in his feeding lane and that is the first huge step in the game of fly fishing. Please do make a hard copy of this series so you can go back to it time and again. Repetition does help retention. Until next month, May god guide your cast and give you good fishing.

This is the second installment of the series on reading the stream. As stated in part 1; a rivers current ( flow ) is the trout's conveyor cafeteria line. A trout sits in its chosen feeding station, waiting for his meal to be delivered, just as we sit at a table in a restaurant waiting for our order to be delivered by a waiter or waitress. You can observe this behavior on any stream where you can sneak up on a high bank, using it as an observation post, wearing polarized sunglasses to see below the waters surface film. You will find the trout at their tables, in or close to the current. In front of or behind an obstruction of the current, or in a basin in the stream bed. These locations provide shelter from the current but allow instant access to the food brought by the current. Trout don't want to spend a lot of energy holding their place at the dinner table.

Your observations of trout behavior will reveal some important facts. When a trout spots a piece of food coming it tips its pectoral fins and drifts up to the morsel, then it grabs the tid-bit by opening its mouth just wide enough, sucks the food in and closes its mouth. With the food captured the trout shifts its pectoral fins and drifts back to the bottom of the stream. The current will have pushed the trout back from his station but he will not return to the table until he is in the slack current next to the stream bed. The trout is a master of lazy and efficient feeding, there is little or no wasted movement. He has to be this way if he wants to grow big. Trout will not chase down a meal unless they are forced to do so because of a shortage of food supply, or they live in still water like a lake or loch. Occasionally you will see a trout chase food but there will be something special about the morsel that they chase, or it will be a young trout or a freshly released hatchery trout not yet wise in open water feeding. As you observe trout feeding you will notice that their side to side feeding is limited to one foot or less. Even choice morsels are ignored if it will take too much energy to grab it. Of course you will find exceptions, but this will be the normal behavior.

As you begin to learn how to read a stream, pick up on the current flow and find the obstructions and other current breaks. If you are a good student and keep a notebook of your observations and fishing experiences, you will become an above average fisherman. Lefty Kreh has said that ten percent of the fishermen catch ninety percent of the fish and I suspect that this ten percent catch all of the really big trout. So look for the places where a trout could rest with out even wiggling a fin and you will find a trout there.

It is important to fully understand that a trout's mind will not allow it to hide in fear and feed at the same time. With a brain 5mm in size, he is simply not capable of doing two unrelated things at once. A frightened trout is totally frightened, he runs to his shelter and hides, aware of every thing around him. He is not thinking of hunger or of eating, he is far to busy being scared and he certainly is not going to expose himself to danger. This is why you sometimes have to "rest" a fish you are trying to catch.

Oxygen, the other essential ingredient, is directly related to water temperature. The O2 we are interested in is dissolved oxygen, because this is the oxygen the trout breathes through its gills. Dissolved oxygen (dO2) is measured in parts per million (ppm). Trout require dO2 of 3ppm to survive. When water reaches a temperature of 75 degrees fahrenheit 3ppm is the maximum dO2 the water can hold with out some form of turbulence to enhance gas exchange (oxygenation). At water temperatures above 75 f with no oxygenation of the water the trout will suffocate. The dO2 super saturation water temperature is 32 f.

Water temperature also controls the trout's metabolism. While very cold water can hold the maximum of dO2 it also slows the trout's metabolism to the point of suspended animation ( a cryogenic effect ). This is the way it works: from 32 f to 44 f the trout is slowed to the point of needing very little food and he has a over abundance of dO2, up to 30ppm. At 50 f to 55 f the trout's activity increases and they actively feed for long periods of time and they still have an over abundance of dO2. When the water temperature reaches the 55 f to 65 f range you have the ideal fishing conditions. The trout's metabolism is in high gear and they feed constantly, dO2 is in the 18 to 12ppm range and there is plenty of food. The food; aquatic insects and their larvae, minnows of all types and crustaceans are prolific and abundant. The fisherman only has to give a proper presentation and he will hook a trout. The great decline starts when the water temperature climbs to 68 f. Brown, Brook and Cutthroat trout start to feel what I call the frying pan effect. Unless there is a lot of turbulence to oxygenate the water, the dO2 falls rapidly to perilously low levels. The trout's metabolism is racing furiously along and he is burning oxygen as fast as he can adsorb it from the water. As the sun heats the water, he uses the dO2 faster and faster. With out some type of escape valve he will suffocate.

The trout reacts to this danger in several ways. The first reaction is to decrease activity as in "the dog days of summer". Fish sulk on the bottom and feeding seems to be nonexistent. When and if they feed it will be in the wee hours of the morning when the water is at its coolest. Water takes a long time to release heat and pre-dawn is when it will be at its coolest. The trout's second reaction is to move to a place where there is more dO2 available. This could be as close as the head of his pool where a riffle provides the turbulence necessary for oxygenation of the water or a considerable distance. If there is a spring feeding the stream, you will find trout stacked up down stream of the plume of colder water. Ground water can be 10 to 15 degrees colder than the stream. A high shady bank can attract many trout also.

So, which is most important to a trout, shelter? food? oxygen? As a biologist I have to go with shelter followed by oxygen, water temperature and food. A trout can survive for a few weeks with out food if necessary, but with no place to hide from danger he won't be there, even if there is plenty of dO2. As a fisherman I am most interested in the food supply, specifically the ease of a trout's obtaining it. Let's face it. If a fish isn't eating you are not going to catch it. If he is too scared or too stressed by lack of dO2, he is not going to eat, and if Mr. trout isn't opening his mouth you are just practice casting.

Does it matter that you have seen a big trout lying on the bottom of a deep pool under a bridge during the days if he doesn't feed there? No it does not! When you see a big trout feeding at the tail of this deep pool in the dusk or dawn hours you have knowledge others would kill for. Now you try to figure out why he feeds there, then you can apply what you have learned to find more big trout. Study the current, see, it is slowest at the tail of the pool where it narrows. Just in front of this trout you spot a wee point jutting into the current. Behind this point is a blown down tree with half the trunk under water. Behind this trout there is a bulge in the water about three inches high. Let's piece together the puzzle. The current slows because of the narrowing of the pool at the tail, concentrating the food. The wee point pushes the food toward Mr. trout, like a billiards bank shot. The fallen tree gives him a place to hide when we blunder into the water or do some other stupid move. The bulge behind Mr. trout tells of a large stone that breaks the current and pushes some water up-stream making a cushion of calmer water. Just the place Mr. trout can hold his position with little effort, and he won't get pushed backward much when he rises to feed. This is where he is protected from the current. This is his dinner table, complete with conveyor belt service. Now you are reading the stream, now you can go find an other big Mr. trout, all that is left is a great presentation.

The information learned in parts one and two of this series form the knowledge base necessary to fully comprehend what will follow, which is where to look for trout in any stream. How to spot the most likely " best seats in the house". In part three we will serve the "meat and potatoes", now that you have gotten the salad out of the way. Until then, may the good lord watch over you and keep you from stepping in that deep hole in the stream bed.

Now that you have learned the how and why of trout behavior, lets get on with learning where they like to live in a stream. "Practice seeing fish and you will catch more of them". This was told to me by the wisest fisherman I have ever met and I have found it to be true. I would like to add some more wisdom to it..."If, however you do not know where to look, you will never learn to see them". If you haven’t yet printed copies of the first two articles in this series, now would be a good time to do so. It will help you follow some of the terms I will be using from now on.

Let’s take a trip to your favorite stream. You pack your gear, load up the vehicle, drive (however far it is) to the car park, get out and suited up, and head to a favorite hole with that special rod in hand. Question.. what do you do next? Do you start wading? do you start creeping up to the bank to cast and hope you get a take? do you find a high spot and observe the water noting any rock,log,gravel bar,bend,deep flat,mossbeds,or other structure that is in or touching the water? do you then stare intently at each little piece of structure to see if you can pick up the slightest hint of movement or shadow that is not part of the structure? If you answer yes to the first two questions then I can assuredly tell you that you will miss the largest fish and even if you catch a few or many, you could have caught more and bigger fish if you had answered yes to the last two. When I go fishing I am amazed at the number of fishermen fishing blind. True, some times you have to live with not knowing where the fish are, but most of the time you can see them if you stop and take the time to locate them. The fish you can see you can cast to and know that you have a good chance of getting them to take your offering. Now you are thinking, sure but where do I look and what am I supposed to see? Let us proceed to dissect a stream and find the answers.

All streams or rivers have some basic sections. Fast water can be broken down into;

rapids, riffles, and pocket water. Slow water can be broken down into; pools, slicks, and eddies. Additionally we can break each of these into their basic parts, for example a pool has a head, a tail, possibly a shelf, and an eye. To look at the water as a whole is to create a confusion of details. What we will do, therefore is to look at the individual parts that make up the whole, hopefully this will bring order to chaos.

Slower current is what fish want to be in most of the time - remember the energy expenditure vrs food from the previous articles? Even in the fastest of current flows slower water can be found. The banks of the stream and the bottom carry an increased drag factor thereby causing the current to flow slower than the main body of water. Bends in a stream also create slow water on the inside of the bend. Boulders and smaller stones in the current flow create two pockets of slower water. Let’s start finding the slower water in each of the sections, remember that every bit of this slower water is a potential fish home, by finding all of the homes on a section you know where all the fish live. Then all you have to do is eliminate the sleeping houses and you are left with the homes of the catchable fish. We will start with the fast water.

Rapids are the fastest water on any stream. They are deeper than riffles and have larger structure features simply because the smaller features have been moved away by the current flow, or they are buried by the volume of water flowing over them. The features that will create slower water here are; 1. Boulders, either sticking through the surface or covered by the surface of the water. Boulders protruding from the waters surface create two pockets of slower water. They are both feeding lies. The front pocket is formed by the damming effect on the current, this causes the water to stack up and create a bulge of slower water. You will see this bulge and sometimes there is a breaking wave just in front of the bulge. A feeding fish or two live(s) in this house. The lee pocket is usually farther from the boulder than you think. the feeding lies of this house are just up stream from the point where the disrupted current flow comes back together. The food conveyor belt will show you this point. Boulders under the waters surface create the same two lies but they are harder to see because they are sub-surface. Look for the bulge in the surface that gives away the boulders position and then use the information you glean from an exposed boulder to find the feeding houses. Also when exploring boulders be sure not to forget the sides of the boulder, fish will sometimes hold here too. 2. The Banks of the stream including the bottom. Look for fish right up against the bank walls. They will be down stream from any bump or other protrusion you can see. If the bank has a definite protruding feature; i.e.. big bump out, series of rocks connecting or almost connecting them to the bank, be sure to check for a slack current behind these. If you see one or not, there will be fish holding in a feeding pattern down stream of these obstructions. You must be able to determine if they are big enough to create a back water eddy or not. If there is a back water situation the fish will probably be looking in the normal currents down stream position. This calls for extra caution when approaching. 3. Any trees that have fallen into the rapid and are either still attached by roots or lodged against the bank or some structure. These do not go clear to the bottom, but they do create a slack current so distance from the obstruction. There will be a feeding fish or more holding in the spot where the slack current forms (look for a slick water area or at least a less disturbed water area). Most important of all is to get as high view as possible and don’t forget to wear polarized glasses. If you can get to point where shade is on the water you want to see through all the better.

At the end of the rapid or riffle (a riffle is just a shallow rapid) there will be a transition area we call the HEAD of the pool The water rushes down the rapid area and hits a deepening stream bottom that might also widen and slows down. The previously tumbling water becomes smoother and quieter in its movement. the feeding lanes (where the food conveyor travels is quite easy to see now, with all its bubbles and whitish foam. There may well be areas in this transition that match the boulder or log descriptions above. If there are they will hold feeding fish in the same manner. You will also find feeding fish on the stream bed in this area, digging nymphs and catching the drowned insects and other morsels the conveyor belt carries. Just down stream from the head of the pool is an area that may be shallow on one bank this is the SHELF. The shelf may be a gravel bar or a sandy bar or a mud bar, it mostly depends on the type of sediment the stream carries and how narrow the main channel becomes at this point. There will be a very distinct line between the fast flowing channel current and the shelf’s current. This is the place to look for feeding fish in the shelf area. When the stream makes a bend I tend to get excited and usually have to back off and regroup my objective. Where there is a bend in a pool area there is usually a small, really flat, area of water from the inner bank to the straight bank on the inside edge of the channel current. This is the EYE of the pool and if you develop the ability to find these special places on the streams pools you will find that half of the fish you catch come from these places. The eye of the pool has fish in a feeding frenzy whether they are feeding on the surface, sub surface or on the bottom. These guys mean business. I was on my home waters just last week and caught 12 nice trout from one eye of the pool area. These are the places I take clients when they want a lot of action on nice sized trout. That should give you an indication on just how productive the "eyes" are. Learn to find them, you will become the fishmiester in your stream over night. Where the pool empties into the next rapid/riffle is called the TAIL of the pool. The Tail of the pool is not so good during day light hours, but go there in the waning hours and stay till dark and you can catch some of the "biguns". The trout that hide and sulk all day are the sharks of the stream. They are some of the trout that have "world record" name plates. If you have the ability to fish at night then you have the ability to catch some really monster trout. The tail has holding areas like we have been talking about but the water becomes shallower and spills into the next rapids area of the stream.

Now you have the information necessary to start the location of catchable fish homes on the stream. I would like to encourage you to; print this article and re-read it until you think you can go to your stream(s) and practice locating these houses with you eyes. You might even want to draw a map of each portion of your stream(s) showing these house locations. If you do this then you will have as much information about the stream as the gillies. The next installment we will learn how to spot individual fish. Then you will have become a good water reader and the only excuses you will have for not catching fish will be your choice of fly or your presentation. But that is for another series. Practice reading water every time you go fishing and remember the time you spend looking for fish is time well spent. If you see them, you can catch them!

May god smile on you in you endeavors.

This installment of reading water deals with details for the fast water types described in part 3. If you have not read parts 1-3 I suggest that you print them or save them to your machine for reading off line at your leisure.

Rapids, riffles, pools, pocket water, slicks, eddies, these are the types of water you fish in a river or stream. The places fish like to call home are found in each, your job is to recognize the feeding lies, see the fish and then cast to a position so your fly (lure) passes where the trout will see it and hopefully eat it. In the last installment I glossed over each type of water to give you a way to go to the stream and try out your new knowledge. Now it is time to get into details.

Rapids are the fastest water flows in a stream. They are at least three feet deep and usually have shallow areas and deep pockets that the current has dug out of the streambed. In order to be able to find these different areas, a little information on hydraulic action of water currents is needed.

To begin we will look at the effect the streambed has on current flow. The water just above the streambed will flow slower than water further away from the streambed; this is due to friction of the water against the streambed. This "pocket" is normally a foot deep. You can check this in an area with a weighted nymph on a long, fine leader, in clear water. Cast up stream and watch the speed of the nymph as it sinks, you will be able to discern several different flow rates as the nymph sinks and you might even see a change in direction of the drift. Knowledge of this can make the difference when casting to a specific fish. A boulder in the rapids causes several different conditions around it. First it blocks the flow and forces the current to split the resulting friction slows the flow rate on either side of the obstruction. An area of slack flow is created immediately in front of the boulder; a slower flow is created down stream of the boulder (this is usually further down stream than you might think) found just behind the visible turbulence down stream of the boulder. If you find two or more boulders forming a dam-like structure you might find a deep pocket down stream of this structure, this is the result of the flow deflections caused by the structure. A formation like this also forms an area toward the bank, extending out to approximately the inner edge of the stone closest to the stream centerline and down stream approximately the length of the dam. In other words, a triangle from the outer most stone to the bank shaped similarly to a 30-60-90 triangle. This area can be very productive, slack current with a seam line running from the outer most stone to a bank junction point. The main thing to remember is that any object in the water is going to effect the current flow in some manner. Fish will look for the slowest water they can find next to a feeding lane (think food conveyor belt). When there is deep water or other cover close at hand as well then you have the makings of a prime lie and the bigger fish will want this type of environment for their home.

Now back to the rapids. What you want to look for in fast moving water are places where the current changes flow-rate. The best place to observe the water and the flow-rate is from as high above the water as possible. Keeping a low profile will ensure that the fish will have a hard time seeing you and you will be able to see into the water with fewer glares to contend with. You will be looking for all the things that cause the current to slow. Large and small boulders, flat areas on the streambed, moss heads, under-cut banks, bank walls formed where a shelf drops off, dips and holes in the streambed, bank protrusions into the current, logs and fallen trees that have become lodged against the bank. Each one of these types of flow disrupting structure must be thoroughly investigated with a studied eye else you miss seeing a fish. You also need to be able to discern the different current flows caused by these obstructions and recognize the feeding lanes that the obstructions set up. Remember that the only difference between Rapids and riffles is the average depth of water.

Pocket water could be described as Rapids but the true nature of pocket water is more specialized than the Rapids description. Pocket water is fast moving current with the streambed literally strewn with boulders and rocks. If you were a boater, pocket water would be very frightening or you would simply portage around it. When looking at pocket water for the first time you will probably know it is pocket water instinctively. The boulders and rocks of pocket water usually end up in the streambed as the result of a rockslide. I was very fortunate to see a section of the Truckee River become pocket water on a fishing trip. I was also very lucky (Grace of God) to survive the event. I went back to that stretch of river two weeks later and the fishing was magnificent! The term pocket water comes from the myriad of pockets of slow water created by the jumble of stones in the streambed. Trout seem to love all the slack current and the intertwining of food lanes that occurs in pocket water. Survey this type of area like you were going to be selling maps of each fishy location and you will never leave with out having caught a few. The one big drawback to the tailwaters I fish now is that I have no pocket water to exploit. The best tip on pocket water I can give is take time to get above the beat and carefully study the way the current reacts to boulder singles, doubles, triples, and all other stone arrangements. Keep your eyes open and looking for the little "windows"(areas of very smooth water that form in conflicting current flows) these will give you the ability to see deeper into the water with a clear view.

I hope you will take the time to draw a map of each bit of water you explore with your new knowledge. Marking where you see fish holding and giving your self-some type of indication of the current flow in the area of each fish spotted as well. Every fish spotted needs to be observed long enough for you to be able to tell if it is feeding or resting. A twenty-pound trout that is in a resting lie will most likely be a non-cacheable fish.

When you go fishing I hope that you don’t wade right in and start slinging line. I see lots of fishermen do that on my home waters and they are usually lamenting about their lack of success when they are going home. The thing is, they do not prepare themselves to be successful before they start casting. Time spent looking at the water you intend to fish will allow you to locate the places in that beat that should hold fish. Time spent looking in the located lies will allow you to see the fish holding in those homes and how they are feeding. This information gives you the knowledge base needed to use the right type of lure (fly) right off the bat. You also know where to start your presentation to that fish so you get the best opportunity to hook up. When you take this pre-fishing time you also have the location of every fish you could see before you make that first cast. This means that you can adjust your starting point so you have the best opportunity to catch all the fish you spotted. Sure some anglers can catch fish by blindly going forth into the fray, but these fellows would increase their catch quantity and quality if they would try some stream investigation first. Here’s an example of what I am trying to get across. I was on the Little Red at Cow Shoals a while back, as I approached the stream I was delighted to find the water level low. The river is tail water and for me low water means easier fish spotting. As I walked the bank, noting the lies and listing them in order of importance in my stream log four fishermen came to the shoal. These fishermen walked up the bank, waded out and began casting and drifting nymphs, not one of them took time to scope the water before they started fishing and they were at the head of the riffle when they waded in. I was higher than they were and saw five good fish bolt to the pool above the shoal. These fish had been holding only a foot or so from where these guys splashed in to the water. Their haste to begin fishing cost them some great fun right from the start. I continued my stalk of this beat and a half hour later, when I was ready to make my first cast, these fishermen were complaining "I don’t think there are any trout in here today" one of them said to me. My reply was "tough day mate?" Two of the four watched me carefully take a position in a stretch they had fished about twenty minutes before. I made a cast one foot ahead of a bulge in the water and held my line up as the gold ribbed squirrel nymph drifted in the seam formed by the submerged rock, I felt the take and after a strip strike I had my hands full. When I landed what turned out to be a 24-inch brown trout, I heard a gentleman remark "we fished the heck out of that riff and didn’t get anything! He just walked in and hooked a big one!" I caught and released seven fish of quality in the next two hours. Those four fishermen went home skunked and discouraged. After I ate lunch on the bank, I went down stream to the second pool after the riffle. There is a nice high bank with a walk ledge on the far side of the stream. After carefully crossing at the tail of the pool I crept along the ledge, looking down into the water. This pool has two really deep holes on the far (right) bank and plenty of moss heads; there are four good boulders as well as an undercut bank. When I observe this pool I have to look for perceptions of fish, the cover is dense and usually all you will see of a trout is the tail moving. I spotted one between the bank and the first boulder as it sipped in something; the flash of a white mouth gave it away. I watched him sink to his holding position and his camouflage made him almost invisible. Up stream from that first fish was a large moss head and after looking at the tails waving in the current for about five minutes I distinguished four tails moving almost perfectly in time with the moss tails. Almost directly in line towards the left bank Is the drop off of the shelf you have to use for wading to fish this pool. I spotted five trout lined up and hugging the bottom of this bank wall, it is almost always in shadow and the fish love to be in that shadow. As I watched these fish one of them raised its head and took some morsel from the current about a foot from the wall. I continued my stalk up the pool and when I was ready to fish the pool I knew where twenty-five trout were hanging out. I also knew that I would hook and land at least five and most likely more if I started from the tail of the pool and worked my way to the head. I also knew they were most likely feeding on nymphs swimming toward the surface to hatch. I knew this because I observed the way the trout feeding. As it turned out, I landed and released nine of the trout I had spotted. Two of which measured 25 inches in length, trophy fish to be sure. The two key elements that allowed me to have this success were the patience to look stealthily for fish and the calmness to move very quietly through the water.

Next time we will cover the details of slow water, the pools, slicks and eddies. I encourage you to go to your favorite fishing waters. Find a high place to look into the beat and take a note or sketch- pad and pencil and draw the river as you see it. Try to include every detail you find. Try to see the fish living in the homes you find, if you do see them, include their locations in your map. Take this map with you each time you fish this beat. When you have all the houses and all the fish spotted and included in your map you will be able to catch a large percentage of the fish every time you fish this beat. Think of how great it will be when you have done this mapping for each beat you fish.