Mainely Outdoors: Rain alters fishing

Ask local anglers how their fishing season has been going so far and responses will vary dramatically. Rainy and wet will be two very common responses, but most casters will reply that trout and salmon action has been mediocre at best. Even lake trollers who fish deep with lead core or downriggers have experienced very spotty action. Week after week of steady rain seems to have taken its toll on all waterways, but especially rivers and brooks.
During a normal year I enjoy great luck fishing grasshoppers, crickets, and caterpillar imitations over schooled up brookies or holding salmon during late July and August. So far this season, surface flies have performed poorly due to high, turbid water conditions which have kept fish more spread out and less likely to eat floating feather fakes. Constant thunderstorms kept flushing not only streamside soil into the waterways, but plenty of natural food in the form of worms, insects and terrestrials as well.
After a few disappointing outings to the Prestile Stream and Meduxnekeag River as well as Whitney and Three brooks, it became apparent that dry flies just weren’t going to work very well. I happened to run into an old friend a couple of weeks ago while he was bottom bouncing worms through a wide, deep run near the Route 1 Three Brooks bridge. After watching him catch two brookies and lose another in about 10 minutes it suddenly dawned on me how I was also going to enjoy faster results, but with flies rather than night crawlers.
I’d run into this same situation after torrential all-day rain hit an Atlantic salmon river I was fishing, and it’s a wonder it hadn’t occurred to me sooner. The fish are still at hand, although they tend to move closer to shore or into slow moving runs and eddies to avoid fighting the current. They still have to eat too, but tend to relocate to spots where natural water flow will move insects and bait to their holding and feeding lie. To entice a fish to take, the trick is to put your fly right under their nose.
Upon arriving back home my very first chore was to take my reel with the floating fly line off my rod and replace it with a sinking tip line. Just to cover all my bases I put a spare spool with a full sinking line in my fly vest pocket, if water levels got higher, faster or dirtier I’d switch to that deep-dredging line. To make sure my flies stayed down I also switched to a shorter, five foot, slightly heavier leader.
My next step was to dig out a couple of new fly boxes, one with small streamer flies and a second with nymphs, aquatics, and baitfish imitations. Most of these patterns were tied on 3X and 4X long shank size 6, 8, and 10 hooks, and a few of the flies were individually weighted with bead eyes or wire wound around the hook shank under the body material. With the sinking tip line, all of these flies would swim within a foot or less of the bottom in a slow current.
Two nights later I was back on a stretch of the Aroostook River between Washburn and Presque Isle, a run that I could drive within 25 yards of, and even with the high water the pool could be fished using chest waders. Tying on a bright streamer named little brook trout, I worked a slow eddy below an island and hooked a nice 12-inch trout within five minutes. After fishing out the run with no other takers I walked the island back to the top of the eddy and tied on a weighted muddler minnow. This baitfish imitation coaxed three strikes, one fish fought free of the hook and I released an 8- and a 10-incher.
Much more pleased than during my last fishless outing, I still wasn’t satisfied so I moved to the opposite shoreline and tied on an olive leech pattern. On my third cast a solid strike proved my theory as a nifty 12-inch brookie engulfed my bottom hugging aquatic imitation. Over the next 40 minutes I hooked six trout, landing and releasing five, one a hard fighting 14-inch brightly speckled beauty. Along with the leech fly, I enjoyed success with a brown sculpin pattern as well as a black Matuka.
A few days later I used some of those same flies to take trout from a couple of Prestile Stream pools in Blaine. When the fish won’t come up, you have to go down after them, fish low and slow and offer flies that closely imitate natural baits that are currently in the waterways.  As autumn begins nighttime temperatures will drop and water conditions will cool further regardless of height so streamer flies and aquatic bug replicas will continue to catch fish until seasons end. Don’t give up on fishing because of the high, dingy water conditions, use different fly patterns and get them down deep where the fish are hanging out, it’s working right now.