Late October Browns
Spent this weekend fishing the Au Sable with my friend Mark. Weather was VERY cold and windy yet mostly sunny so temps were right for big browns but the sun had me worried they would seek cover, but obviously a few nice fish were lurking out and about. Fished mostly Olives and Streamers. The blue winged olives would start hatching about 3pm and lasted till about 6pm and it seemed every trout in the river would be rising in water that was barren just minutes earlier. Problem was the Olives were about a size 24 and the trout (even the tiny 8"ers) were V-E-R-Y selective!
These feeding fish had to be the pickiest little bastards I have come across in my 22 yrs of fly fishing. They would rise right in front of you over and over again, you could drift your tiny #24 BWo right dead on over the fish and he would come up to about 1" from the fly and turn at the last second. It was some of the most frustrating dry fly fishing I have ever had on the Au Sable. I did manage to take of those BWO sipping rainbows after being very persistent and changing flies 1,000 times plus going to 7x tippet. So just taking those picky fish albeit small ones, was satisfying in and of itself.
The real fun came on streamers though. I fished long and hard pounding big olive and brown colored streamers to cover, to the deeper holes, and to the flat shallow featureless runs because in late fall you never know where that big brown might be sitting with the water so cold and not much pressure from other fisherman. And the day was very rewarding with some beautiful mid to high teen's sized browns slamming my streamer. One of the best days in that section of the Au Sable I have had in awhile.
I have a few pics but my buddy Mark has a couple more of my other fish on his camera. But I do have one of the nice 16" browns I caught as well as a few other neat pics from the weekend. I'll post the others when my buddy Mark stops by for coffee Thursday and I copy the pics from his camera.
Steve
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