Brown Trout are for Fools

Growing up fly fishing for smallmouth, I was spoiled. It seemed that whatever contrivance of feathers, foam and rubber I came up with, the uneducated bass of my youth would lay all over it.

- Phil Goes

Sometime later, when I graduated to steelhead, I found they weren't all that picky either. Even the fabled Atlantic salmon were susceptible to a crude Muddler Minnow or black Wooly Bugger. But the big brown trout that inhabited the slow-moving waters of the Midwest, well, they were different. They would highlight the faults in your casting and reject your best flies. They were tough.

Dreams of rising trout turned into real-life nightmares. I started carrying more flies, each tailored to a specific situation, should it arise. My scrawny teenage frame could barely support the weight of my overstuffed fly vest. Sure, I caught trout, but not the big ones that would occasionally show themselves. I was a sad case.

It was this consistent rejection that led me back to swinging flies for steelhead, lake-run browns and Atlantic salmon. These were essentially just big trout, but they would bite just about anything if you fished it long enough.

These anadromous fish had their demands, and I answered by adhering to a certain code of conduct. Bright fly on a bright day, and a dark one on a dark day. Bigger flies in the fall and winter, followed by smaller ones in the spring. Of course, there were exceptions for high and low water,but these were rules I could follow.

As big as these trout were, and despite the success ratio, I found myself wanting their much smaller, much more refined, inland-dwelling cousins.

Yep, I was in for some dark days ahead.

I could go on and describe the misery punctuated by brief moments of success where I thought I had figured something out, or when I set the hook to a brown so big that the slack line went snapping through the guides and in the process wrapped around the back side of my ear before the fish snapped the tippet. But really, the fish I caught were gifts, and I was clueless most days.