On Thursday August 29th, Bill Byington and Martin Jones headed down to Montauk State Park for a day of fishing. It was a beautiful end of summer day with lots of white puffy clouds in the sky, little humidity, and temps reaching about 85 in the afternoon. When we started making our way down to the river we noticed masses of Trico hatches occurring all around us. The excitement of a potential big day quickened our step. We decided to start our day up at the spring and work our way down. As we had hoped, we found the Trico hatch on the water as well. Bill decided to rig up a Griffith’s Gnat and get things started. I thought I’d try sub-surface with a Zebra Midge. We saw a few rises, but not that many. It sure seemed like we were poised for a big morning, but as we all know the trout can often have different ideas. Seems like this day the trout were interested in investigating our flies, but at the last second would turn their head and refuse our offering. We tried several different flies throughout the morning with pretty much the same result. The water was clear and we could see trout all around us, but we could not get them to consume our presented flies. We could almost hear the trout whispering “you boys are going to have to do a lot better if you want us to take what you’re offering”.
Late that morning we met another fly fisherman and asked how he was doing. He told us he had been there all week and the fishing had been very slow. He said the trout had been very finicky and the only thing he had any success with was with a fly that looked like a large egg and said it was called “The Blob”. It looked like it was made of McFlyfoam in the colors of the Clown Package. He was just letting it lie on the bottom and then waited for a fish to investigate and then they were taking it. Sounded kind of odd, but he was certainly having more success than the two of us as we were. He was relatively new to fly fishing, so Bill and I told him about FATC and each gave him a few terrestrial flies, bid him success, and then broke for lunch.
After lunch, the wind had picked up a bit and we were noticing quite a few grasshoppers flying around as we made on way up the path back to the river. We both decided to try some terrestrials. Bill worked a beetle and I decided to try a grasshopper. Things finally got active and we both began to catch fish. As the afternoon progressed, we were forced to try some other flies. I worked an olive bead-head wooly bugger and also swung some soft hackles. I had a few takes, but did not bring them to the net. Bill went with a Cerise Worm and began to have some success. He was using some weight to get the worm down and was fishing it under an indicator. He was having limited success until he saw that the worm was resting on the bottom and saw a trout coming to investigate. He was on! Then he remembered what the other fly fisherman told us earlier that morning about how he was letting an egg pattern sit on the bottom and the trout were taking it! Bill decided to remove his indicator and began to let the worm swing downstream and let it just sit on the bottom. He could see the trout get excited, investigate, and then take the Cerise Worm! He was on to something and caught several fish that way until the end of the afternoon.
All in all, we ended up having a good day. Like I said, it was certainly a different day, but it was a good end of summer fishing day.
(See the attached pics and videos of our day)
