Many of you fish for brown trout at night. This is probably the most productive way to fish for them in smaller wadeable rivers and streams. 10:00 on a hot July moonless night appears to be the bewitching hour and most mavents will fish till 2 or 3 in the morning. Here's a few hints.

I like to fish the evening with dry's or film cadis. This usually requires a 5 or 6X leader. When you switch over to #2 muddler or such for night, you want a shorter hefty leader maybe around .009" or .011". I tie a perfection loop at .009 on a 9 foot tapered 5X leader and handshake the rest of the leader to the dry. Then when the sun goes down and the pines turn black, I can unhitch the dry and handshake a level .009" leader with a pretied muddler. You can do this almost in the dark and you don't have to switch on your headlamp and be eating bugs for a few minutes.

Secondly, most use a headlamp to check dangerous wading spots and check distance to the streamside cover. You only turn it on for a second to get oriented and not spook fish. If you hear a brown feeding close, you never turn it on and just guess the distance to the brown. Try this. Get one of those little laser pointers or a flashlite with an imbedded laser and shine it towards the streamside vegitation. With a little practice this can allow you to guess distance w/o turning any fish spooking headlight at all. The fish will not see it at all because they are not looking for a little red dot on the bushes.

Lastly, I use a glow in the dark line from RIO. I don't seem to spook fish with it and it does help with line positioning.

Godspeed,

Bob