I’ve been itching to break out the 3 weight on my local stream this year, but early spring steelhead makes it too risky until they drop back out to the lake. With everyone awake early, the sun shining through the bedroom blinds and birds chirping, it seemed like a good morning to sneak out for a couple hours before work.

I love small streams and all the perks and challenges that come with them: solitude, stalking wary fish, light gear and technical casting. Sure, fish size generally correlates to stream size, but when you’re casting a 2-3 weight rod with 6-8x tippet on a small stream, an 8 inch trout can be just as exciting (or more so) than a 12 inch trout on a larger river.

A wider-than-average stretch of the stream I fished Wednesday morning

I had a quick breakfast, geared up at the house and arrived at my destination a short drive later. I decided to try out a new path to the stream and while it was fairly well marked at the beginning, it had all but disappeared by the time it reached the river. I considered marking the exit of the path so I could easily find my way back when I was finished, but it seemed to be in a recognizable enough location, so I decided that wasn’t necessary.

The path to the water was fairly visible here, but would not be so easy to find on the way back

I started out with a sparsely tied Partridge soft hackle in red and was immediately into small Rainbows. Some fish were small enough that they still had visible parr marks, though many were a bit larger. Atlantic juveniles are also known to be in this stream and I still have a hard time differentiating them from small rainbows at times. If I’m wrong in any of my identifications here, please comment and correct me!

First of many fish caught on a red partridge soft hackle

Since the fish seemed eager to take my flies, I also tried a couple different dry flies with moderate success: a Patriot and Red Humpy. In case you’re wondering, the tape on my finger is due to a likely (still unverified) broken finger from volleyball last week.

A tiny Rainbow Trout with visible fading parr marks, caught on a Patriot

As I worked upstream, I came across some nicer looking pools and decided to go back to sub-surface pattern to try and get into some better fish. One of my favourite ultra-versatile flies has to be the Bead Head Pheasant Tail Soft Hackle (or any similar bead head soft hackle). The easiest way to fish these is to swing them, but you can also dead drift them like you would a standard nymph. The bead head is enough to get it down and the partridge collar gives it some nice action in the water compared to a standard Pheasant Tail. It proved once again to be an excellent producer as I landed many more fish on it, including a couple unexpected browns.

A couple Brown Trout took my Pheasant Tail Soft Hackle while upstream nymphing

From the same pool the two browns were caught in, I also landed a few more rainbows, including a couple like the one below which I am not quite sure about.

Rainbow or Atlantic? I still have a hard time differentiating when they are small like this.

Another fish like above, a bit less silver.

Still pulling fish out of the same pool, a decent strike led me to give a solid yank upwards to set the hook, when my pheasant tail shot up into a tree branch several feet above my head. I couldn’t manage to pull it free and lost the last bead head soft hackle in my fly box. Part of the joys of fishing small streams.

I tied on a small Hares Ear to continue where I left off and after a couple more small fish, I was completely surprised by hooking into an 18-20″ steelhead! With a 3 weight rod and 6x tippet, while it may have been possible to land, as soon as I got him on the reel he tore upstream and snapped me off. An exciting way to end things for sure!

When I began heading back, I came to the unfortunate realization that I failed to memorize what the entry point of the path looked like. I retraced my steps a few times, walked in the direction of where I thought the path should be, but couldn’t find it. What ensued was about 30 minutes of bush-whacking my way through fairly dense forest trying to find my car in 20+ degree weather with a sweatshirt on. Needless to say, I took a much needed shower before heading to work. Never a dull moment.

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I got out again Friday morning before work. There weren’t many bugs early morning, so I started fishing wet flies. When that was unproductive, I moved on to nymphs and later tried streamers. Fishing was slow, with little more than a couple missed hits on the wet flies.

As the sun came up and the temperature began rising, I started seeing a bunch of these:

Lots of Tricos were hatching an hour or so past sunrise

The water was very clear, but I wasn’t really seeing any rises. Since the sub-surface patterns weren’t doing particularly well for me, I figured I may as well try some Trico dry flies. A couple refusals (from some very small fish) was about all the action I had with these. Despite the hatches, fish simply weren’t feeding on Tricos, at least not on the surface.

I went back to wet flies, again with no real success. Mind you, my supply of wets was less than ideal, with only a couple unweighted patterns tied on standard dry fly hooks. I don’t think I was getting the fly down far enough. I could have added some weight to my line, but I just didn’t have much confidence in these flies.

There was still no surface activity, but I decided to tie on another (larger) dry fly: one of my historically most successful attractor patterns for this river, a Red Humpy. I had only one left and on top of being a pretty bad tie, it was also quite beat up. A few casts in and I caught my first fish of the morning: a tiny brown trout. Shortly after, I caught a couple more small browns.

The first few fish were all 6″ or less, so assuming that my Humpy was only managing to fool the young dumb fish, I switched back to a Trico. I figured, maybe the dry fly action was just now picking up and matching the hatch would get me into some better fish now. Well, it didn’t… the Trico continued to be ineffective.

Before switching back to my Humpy, I tried a few other flies to rule out the possibility of the Humpy not being the reason for my previous luck: a Stimulator, Caddis, BWO and a Partidge and Red.  I caught nothing on these flies, but after tying the Humpy back on, I was into more fish almost immediately.

As I waded downstream (further from the access point), the fish began increasing in size. A couple more 6″ fish, then some in the 8-10″ range.

I started to catch some better fish as I moved further downstream

It was getting late and the sun was now high in the sky. I was pretty happy with the outcome of the morning and the fact that I managed to figure things out and land a few decent trout. I started to wade a bit more quickly down river towards the next exit point, still drifting my fly through some of the better looking water. That’s when this good looking brown trout gulped up my Humpy:

A nice brown trout caught mid day on a Red Humpy.

I caught this fish midstream in some pretty shallow riffles, full sun and no cover nearby. Needless to say, I was not expecting it! I had 6x tippet on and he got into some pretty fast water, but I managed to get him to the net to wrap up another great trip.

So, why a Red Humpy? I remember my reason for deciding to start tying and fishing it on this river many years ago. My dad’s friend PJ introduced me to the Humpy and I liked how durable the fly was and how well it floated. My theory was that since the Isonychia Bicolor (Slate/Mahogany Dun) is so common on the this river almost all season long, a Humpy tied in red around size 12 might work as a rough imitation. I can’t really say whether this is the key to its success here, but I guess it’s a theory. Or, it might simply come down confidence. Everyone has their favourite go-to fly for a particular river and for me, this is it.

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