Fishing the rise

[Guest FreshwaterFisherman]

I read books, watch videos, and fish as much as I can, I always read in books about people fishing rivers and having a ton of luck on dries, and fishing rising fish. I fish rivers in our area ALOT, I do see the odd fish surface but I never see a bunch of fish rising. I do have luck with dries but I am rarely ever matching anything, or fishing in relation to a hatch, do fish rise to feed as often here as in some other more southern rivers? Do any of you guys target trout during specific hatches? If so, are you able to watch fish rise throughout the whole hatch? I sometimes crawl to the rivers edge and watch before fishing at all, and I still don't see much in the way of rises. So I don't think I am spooking them. I would love to be able to target rising fish with a dry, and not just drift the fly through a promising hole, "hoping" there is a fish there. I want to form a game plan for a specific fish, watch it, time it, decide on best spot to present my fly from, but I don't find that many opportunities in our area to do that. Am I missing something?

[Guest mud trout]

Hello FF, The best type of dry fly fishing is to individual rising trout. To answer your first question, no we don't see the kind of hatches here that are on many southern streams and rivers. Much of it is the same type of insect, much of the same species of mayfly and caddisfly as found elsewhere, but our hatches are sparse for the most part.
I fish mostly smaller rivers down to the tinniest of creeks. From my understanding some of the larger rivers do get large insect hatches. I've heard about the Hexagenia mayflies and large stonefly hatches of Nipigon river but have never witnessed it myself.

There are times however when I have had to match the hatch even on some small creeks. I've been out when March browns have been coming off of the water and if it wasn't for a #14 tan emerger pattern ( the only thing in my box that was close), I would have been fishless. I know because many patterns got refused before I switched to the pattern that worked. So brook trout can be selective too. Other times I have fished blue dun or BWO hatches and flies of similar size shape and colour are what worked best. A few years ago I seemed to be showing up at a particular creek in the evening when midges were hatches, in this case almost nothing took the trout except the odd rise to a very small Griffiths Gnat.

For the most part I can go the whole summer and never encounter a real hatch where trout are really selective. I do see more caddis than mayflies usually so if nothing is on the water a caddis pattern is usually my go to.

I fish a lot late afternoon to late evening, many times getting off of the water just before dark. There is usually something happening how ever sporadic late in the day and you'll see a few trout rising and willing to take any good trout pattern presented well. This is a great time to target single rising trout and more often than not they are very willing.

[brookiebuster 117]

At a certain swampy creek/beaver pond I fish the brookies rise everywhere and I mean everywhere. All I do is tie on a dry(usually a orange stimulator) around the same size as whatever insect is hatching and cast to a rising fish. So much fun seeing a fish rise then flinging out a dry to the fish and watching a big ole brookie slam it. They always seem to rise the most later in the day when the water is calm. Even works in smaller brookie lakes. I even target rising fish when fishing with streamers.

[Guest FreshwaterFisherman]

We'll sure enough, I'm on a river last night, fishing a slow stretch since a few fish are rising there, I look down to a riffle near the tail out and swarms of bugs coming off the surface, and a TON of fish rising, only over faster moving water, no bugs over the slow stuff. No idea what bug, very small, but my EHC did get me quite a few little trout. Little fish but still fun.

[brookiebuster 117]

Killed the brookies with hoppers the other night.

[Guest FreshwaterFisherman]

Right on! Well done, beauty fish.

[toma-hawk 44]

I was on the nipigon river and seen a fish rising I put on an adams in a wine colour and proceeded to fish were the fish was rising took about 10 drifts and it finally hit the fly,and I hooked and landed it.It was a steelhead 261/4'' long.I bought the fly in Halifax along with some bombers to try in the nip.I didn't have any hits on the bombers but I will keep trying them.

Rick T.