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Just the other wintry day, I ambled up to Scotts
Flat Reservoir pining for some holdover or wild 'bows and/or some
really fucking slow-moving - and exquisite-tasting - black bass. I
picked apart several points in blue-dawn light with a bouncing spoon,
hoping to entice a wakasagi-huntin' 'bow. Despite smooth casts and
achingly addictive presentations, nary a trout stuck itself to my hook:
water was just a touch too cold for the 'bows to really be on a
fast-moving prowl. With the sun rising and the light illuminating the
glassy reservoir water, I switched taxa and focused on dragging a
smallie or biggie out of boulder-strewn corners, finally sticking a big
ol' bronze bitch on a slothfully crawled tube jig. The sun passing its
daily apex and sinking slowly towards the cold, cold evening, and
signifying the typically worst part of the day to catch a fish -
afternoon - I opted to sidle over to a shallow point by the dam
(admittedly not the greatest location), bomb out some skewered
nightcrawlers on light-line sliding-sinker rigs, and hope a lazy trout
would shimmy on over and slurp my bait.
That little bait-dunking spell, during which a
fish didn't even breathe on my baits, was, nevertheless, the most
stimulating type of hunting I conducted that icicle day. Crouched on
haunches, still, intensely watching the gossamer lines for the
slightest movement that would indicate a fish succumbing to my baits,
it struck me, it bashed through my consciousness how fucking much I was
enjoying the seemingly boring,
static enterprise of bait-fishing for trout. It got me thinking, as
these mini-epiphanies always do, as to why.
That the bait-dunking for wild/holdover trout tapped into deep
nostalgic fibers coursing through my mind was no doubt part of it -
from myriad numbing wintertime Gregory and Arrowhead and Green Valley
treks for fat 'bows in my teens, to the hazy years of my 20s when I
reenacted the same rite but at Cuyamaca in San Diego County and Harriet
Reservoir way north in Oregon, to my middle-age years plying the waters
I now consider home, such as Sly Park and Sugar Pine and Rollins - a
rich tapestry of memories existed in my mind, needing only a cursory
re-creation of some aspect to be fired, which both the similar
mixed-coniferous forest ensconcing Scotts Flat and my statuesque
posture provided. But perhaps more important was that the sit-and-wait
approach - ambushing really - has become an uncommon way for me to
pursue fish of late, when I'm usually donning the guise of the active
stalker, as I did at Scotts Flat that morning with the trout-spoonin'
and the bass jig-draggin'.
And, fuck me, the
ambush approach to catch winter still-water trout is so very often
goddamn effective and efficient - it works.
Unlike black bass and lotic trout, which tend to stick to one very
defined profitable place and so require a predator to go to them,
still-water trout, especially 'bows, tend to cruise more (Dedual et al
2000, James and Kelso 1995). Given autumn turnover, trout are no longer
restricted to cooler, deeper water during winter, rendering food
abundance - if other water-quality conditions such as turbidity remain
favorable - the primary determinant of where
trout'll be roaming. Often, the still-water areas hosting the most food
are the inlets (Fillion 1967), which deliver both stream-produced foods
and nutrients for fueling lentic food webs. Thus positioning at an
inlet at the right time of day - mornings but especially evenings -
with an appropriate bait [e.g., worms - though worms are virtually
absent in trout in still-water diet studies, damn, they are still one
of the most abundant invertebrates in the benthos of lakes and
reservoirs (Popp and Hoagland 1995, Fillion 1967)] is a pretty fuckin'
intelligent strategy, especially since the water is often below trout
optimum temperatures (e.g., in the 40s°F) and so the fish are really
unlikely to chase a fast-moving lure or fly while happily gobbling a
stationary, natural bait. In a way, it's an inverted actualization of a
tiered optimal-foraging theory: the food patch is stationary (the
inlet), the next-level predator is mobile (the trout), and the next-level
predator (the human) is stationary. In contrast, the active-stalking
approach creates another moving dot - the human - in the equation,
squaring and thus reducing the probability of contact, in addition to
presenting a moving lure low-metabolism trout are less likely to eat.
Now many highfalutin fucking fly-guys scoff and
deride bait-dunking as too easy, a crude, Neanderthal method for
pursuing wild or holdover trout, but they're just being precious,
ignorant, classist, and provincial, as if chasing trout with space-age
gear and all the latest overpriced trendy garbage (e.g., Simms leakable
waders, fucking Go Pro, Yeti cooler) is somehow a more authentic
interaction. It may be easier to get a fat 'bow that chewed a worm on
an appropriate rig to hand than to get the same fish to stomp a slowly
crawled wooly bugger and meet its maker at the bank during winter, but
it ain't by much. In both cases, whether with fly rod or spinning rod,
the leaders need turn over properly - if not, then the fly gets tangled
with the leader, or the bait leader gets tangled with the sinker and so
won't freely feed line when a trout takes, causing the trout to dump
the bait. Thus each method requires skillful fluid casting motions.
Both require careful line management - with the fly rod, maintaining as
straight a connection as possible between rod tip and fly so to detect
the often subtle strikes in such cold water, and with the spinning rod,
making damn sure that plenty of slack remains in the main line so trout
can take the bait with no resistance while balancing keeping the main
line from slipping beneath rock and wood. When a fish does take, the
bait-dunker often has a more difficult battle to face since the leader
has to be as thin as possible to even get trout to take, while a fly
(or lure) guy can generally get away with a heavier leader and still
get bit; further, the bait-dunker often has to contend with more
obstacles since it's often necessary to sink the line below any surface
currents to get that requisite main-line slack. Leader length and bait
placement are also important, as it's often all too easy to have a
too-long leader [wild fish tend to feed benthically more than hatchery
fish (Rowe 1984)] and to put it in too-deep water, let alone
identifying the coarser patterns (inlet, time of day) correctly for a
successful fish hunt.
That being on-point when
bait-dunking for coldwater lentic trout is absolutely required has been
reinforced far too many times by my successes and the concomitant
failures of many of my prodigies when I've sent 'em into the Sierra
with very specific directions. I recall a trip three of 'em took to
Stumpy Meadows Reservoir, and not a single one caught a trout. The next
week, I took one of those kids and instructed him in person how the rig
should look, how it should be cast, where it should be cast, and while
he indeed caught a nice holdover, that was a third of what I went home
with. Another time I limited with ease at Scotts Flat, following which
a protege rolled up the following week to capitalize on the same
pattern only to get smoked, even after he called me while on the water
for ideas. And these are smart kids. Easy it ain't, motherfucker.
Bait-dunking for coldwater trout varies from
fly-fishing and lure-chucking in that success depends much more on what
is seen while bait-dunking than what is felt
when fishing more actively. Given the balance needed in bait-dunking
between having the main line slack for a weightless take yet still
keeping it somewhat taut to minimize snagging on bottom debris, a
bait-dunker needs to be zeroed in on that line to both discern whether
floating vegetation or wood caused that line to tighten or if a trout
took and so extra slack line needs to be fed so the trout really eats
it (coldwater trout are often very slow in engulfing a bait such that
they often need many free-running feet for the hook to get deep enough
for a solid hookset). For lure and fly guys, it's more the feel - you
gotta set the hook, whether it's a nymph on a fly rod or a marabou jig
on a spinning rod, as soon as the trout mouths the lure since they will
eject fakes in a second, and that requires an acute sense of touch.
Hence bait-dunking and more active methods depend more on different
sense modalities for success.
The end result is this: the ambush strategy of
bait-dunking for winter lentic trout ain't some fucking lazy-ass way
for some dipshit human to catch fucking wild, wily 'bows. It's a
motherfucking skill and art, requiring finesse and knowledge and
understanding and sensitivity and discipline. Further, it complements
the sensory modalities and strategies of the active-stalker mode of
fishing - it completes and
fuses whole a fish Romanticist, while leaving those poor, poor fly-only
guys who display ignorant, imperious, staunch adherence to feathers and
fur and stripping and dipping only fragments.
REFERENCES
Dedual, M., I. D. Maxwell, J. W. Hayes, and R. R. Strickland. 2000. Distribution and movements of brown trout (Salmo trutta) and rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in Lake Otamangakau, central North Island, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 34: 615-627.
Fillion, D. B. 1967. The abundance and distribution of
benthic fauna of three mountain reservoirs on the Kananaskis River in
Alberta. Journal of Applied Ecology 4: 1-11.
James, G. D., and J. R. M. Kelso. 1995. Movements and habitat preference of adult rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) in a New Zealand montane lake. New Zealand Journal of Freshwater and Marine Research 29: 493-503.
Popp,
A., and K. D. Hoagland. 1995. Changes in benthic community composition
in response to reservoir aging. Hydrobiologia 306: 159-171.
Rowe, D. K. 1984. Factors affecting the foods and feeding patterns of lake-dwelling rainbow trout (Salmo gairdnerii) in the North Island of New Zealand. Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 18: 129-141.