Very nice gesture EdD
Hey CrappieCat, good luck you’ve gotten great advice.
Depending on how long they?ve been in the water, stocked trout may not have had time to adapt to feeding on insects like wild ones. How wide and deep is the river you?ll be fishing? And what kind of flies do you have now? Bet some of the ones you?ve been using in warmwater will work. As folks have pointed out, twitching weighted nymphs or buggers is probably the best way to go. Here are some options working with some stuff you probably have already:
Best bet might be to fish something like a size 10 or 12 black bead head wooly bugger in some of the deeper spots like pools, through runs, or along undercut banks. Cast out slightly upstream, wait a bit to let it sink, and slowly twitch-strip it as it swings down stream. If it?s really deep you could use a conehead bugger, or crimp on some small split shot to your leader. Ideally, you?ll want to fish them close to the bottom. Unfortunately, this means you?ll probably lose a few to rocks, so have some backups.
For dry flies, first look to see if there are any risers and/or what might be on the water and try to match it in size and color with whatever you have. If nothing was going on, or I didn?t have a close match, I?d probably spend a little time with something like a Parachute or regular Adams size 14 or 16. It?s a good all around fly for slow water on a 5x tippet. A Gray Wulff, which has white wings, and lots of hackle, will float a little higher and be easier to see. Other patterns you may already have and could use instead are Humpies, Elk Hair Caddis, Royal Wulff, Blue Wing Olives, Ants, or small beetles. All of these are good generic fishy looking things, and it?s worth trying a few in size 14, 16 and 18?s if you have them, to see if you can get anything to come up. Vary them up. Say a Wulff or Humpy in 14, an Adams, Tan EHC or Beetle in 16, a Black Ant or BWO in 18 just as an example.Even though the current maybe slow, try to get a natural drift with the dry fly by casting slightly upstream, and mending the belly of your line upstream if you need to. BTW, a good dry fly to have for trout, that you may not now, is a Griffth?s Gnat in size 18 or 20, for when trout are eating really, really tiny stuff on the surface. It can imitate a whole clump of small #26 midges for example, so it allows you to fish a fly you can actually see when there?s really small stuff. It?s a good pattern to pick up eventually if you?re going to be gunning for trout, even if you don?t do it now.
If it?s legal to fish more than one fly at a time, you could also fish a ?dropper?. Just hang a small nymph or wet fly like a Pheasant Tail Nymph, Brassie, Soft Hackle, Flymph etc. on a small 6? piece of tippet, one end tied to the bend of the dry fly, and the other to the eye of the nymph. The dry fly will act as a ?strike indicator? (think ?bobber?) for your nymph, with the added advantage of maybe nailing a fish or two. Generally, folks use a dry fly 1 or 2 sizes larger than the nymph or wet (to float it). So a size 14 Wulff or Humpy and a 16 PTN or 16 soft hackle or 18 bead head PTN might work for you. Just use a short dropper, ?cause longer ones get tangled on the cast more often
If nothing is happening on top, you could try swinging a wet fly like a size 14 brown flymph, an orange soft hackle or green Sparkle Caddis Pupae if you have something like that. Just cast across stream and let it swing down below you on a tight line. Work the water near you first with short casts, and gradually reach out with longer casts to cover more water after you?ve worked it. If you have them, you can fish bead head nymphs like a #16 Pheasant Tail, #12 Gold Ribbed Hare?s Ear or a #10 Prince the same way to cover the same stretch of water with a deeper presentation, different profile and size. As Buddy mentioned you can fish two nymphs or a bugger/nymph combo subsurface, (if legal) to give the trout a choice of patterns and sizes?.or to catch them 2 at a time.
If you want to try unweighted nymphs and/or egg patterns, you could to use them with a little micro shot (tiny split shot) to accomplish the same thing. You can just pinch the shot to the tippet 6-12? ahead of the fly. If you start losing some to rocks or whatnot, that means you are probably in the strike zone, but if it starts to be a problem, when you retie your tippet with a blood knot, leave a tag end of tippet 4? or so at the knot, tie a double over hand knot about 2? from the blood knot, and pinch the micro shot on the tag end above the OH knot. The knot will keep the micro shot on when you cast. That way, the nymph or egg will ride a little bit off the bottom and be much less likely to snag. If you do get hung up, it?ll probably be the micro shot, and hopefully it?ll just pull off the knot. PTN, GRHE, or a Prince would be good basic choices for nymphs. Eggs in orange, pink, peach and/or chartreuse made of yarn or that sparkly estaz stuff would be a good basic assortment. Eggs often work very well for stockies.
If you have a sink tip on a spare spool or back up reel, put it in a pocket of your vest and bring it with you. If you don?t have luck with a floating line, you could swap out the floater and use a short leader, say 4-6 feet or so, and something like an unweighted black marabou muddler or a black zonker size 6 or 8 for deep water pools and runs, fishing it the same way as the bugger. Purple, olive and all white can be good colors too if you have them already. Sometimes they can trigger vicious strikes, perhaps because hatchery fish are used to competing with each other. It?s a great way to catch big trout too, and it?s hard to fish them wrong. They?ve saved the day for me many a time, and my biggest trout so far was caught that way in a pool. If you don?t have a sink tip, you could use a split shot ahead of the muddler or zonker, or you could try a clouser.
Good luck CrappieCat, go get ?em. Hopefully everybody will be coming up to you to ask what you?re using!
peregrines
Are they easy to catch??