Another year in the books marks the end of what you were going to accomplish over a 365 day time span, and naturally also a place in time where we as human beings turn our focus in a forward direction to the year ahead. In evaluating my 2025 season, it was one that felt like a grind, but actually involved results that were pretty good. I say a grind because it was a year that buglife and “great fishing” just didn’t ever fall into my lap. 2025 was the worst Hendrickson hatch year I have seen in the Northeast in 30 years, many rivers seemingly not getting the bugs at all. Even caddis seemed down. Big bugs were nothing special later on in the spring, and it was a grind to find bugs and big fish going hard on the surface all season. A few isolated big fish led to the typical 22-23’’ fish being the fish of the season in the east, but a lot of days were a few fish found and long lull periods in between them.
The western season was similarly underwhelming aside from a June trip that brown drakes and pmds were on point and brought big fish up. By the time the western season had come up in 2025, I had become accustomed to having to get creative to drum up fish and grind out days with the way the eastern US season had gone. I was in a terrestrial mindset and was reminded how effective a simple beetle can be both to sporadic rising fish, as well as blind when there is nothing going on. The beetle by far was my top producing pattern in the 2025 year. I got lucky on a last light sipping fish that took a spinner that was an old fish, but 25’’ and didn’t feel like the fish of the season despite its size.
On streamers, I landed 2 browns that were 25’’, one being a late winter shoulder season fish that was healthy with shoulders. The other being a fish that was swung up on the two hander in December just days ago in the Catskills, which serves as my best day time brown landed in the Catskills to date.
I lost 2 browns on streamers in 2025 that were clear 30’’ level fish- one on the spey in march that was lost because I had an antique of a reel that just couldn’t reel up line quick enough when that fish decided to come running at me after coming out of the water (that antique is now gone and made me mad at myself for making the mistake of using it in the first place). For the second one lost, just a freak fish coming out of a weed bed on a tailwater in broad daylight and high sun that scared the hell out of me exploding to the surface as the fly hit the water. Fish hooked himself and unhooked himself in less than 5 seconds and was a reminder that feels like your dad lecturing you “always be ready because you never know when that fish you’re after is going to show itself”. Losing 2 fish in one season that were of a size you might not see again in your life made it difficult to view the season as one that I capitalized on, and still now as I’m writing this tarnishes my view of the season. Encountering two fish of this size though brings me to the true topic here, which is your seasonal plans and approach to a season. So, let’s focus on that.
Setting your goals:
The start of every year and season logically requires determining what you want to accomplish in the upcoming year. For every angler, that goal is different. Some people want to try a new place or places, some want to push the envelope on their personal best fish and don’t care where that happens. Some want to learn a new method or take on a new fish.
For going new places, my experience is that people during the winter off season get cabin fever and dream up these wild ideas, but then end up doing the same shit they always do. This goes for the places they fish and the way they fish them. It’s no different than being fat and saying you’re gunna get skinny every January. But they stay fat after going running for a couple weeks and don’t do the things necessary to meaningfully change the situation.
If you want to go to new places, you need to force yourself to take action now while your mind is jaded by the cold and you’re vulnerable to making a decision that is a-typical of what you would normally do. Book the lodging, do something that puts roots in the ground for you going to that place when it’s a good time to go and which makes you feel committed to actually doing it. Don’t say you’ll get around to it and just want to confirm a few things with your schedule, month goes by, few personal excuses later spring is around the corner and you’re doing the same shit again or…………….even worse not fishing at all because as you’ll claim later “time just got away from you and the calendar got booked up”. This is a pathetic expression and not an excuse I accept from anyone without immediately knowing this isn’t a real fisherman to begin with and someone that is a tourist level hobbyist at best, but it happens to people that fall within that class of angler. Don’t ever let your life and things you say/do become such a bad reflection of yourself.
GETTING THAT BIGGER FISH:
Self-criticism is healthy and the start of doing better this year than you did last. I’ll start with myself so I don’t come off like Tony Robbins here and perhaps redeem myself with some of you that I’ve already insulted. I spread my time on waters fished too thin last year. I fished a lot of different rivers and sections, and never got dialed in on one. Given the fact that bugs sucked, I took the approach that I’ll keep running around and find them somewhere and stubbornly refused to accept this was a bad bug year everywhere. When the fishing is tough, you need to identify a few places that still can fish well and from there even, focus in more closely on specific pools and areas that are worth spending a good percentage of your time. Certain pools and places always have a little something going on- and when the fishing sucks you should gravitate to those areas that are almost microclimates that provide opportunities even when it’s bad everywhere else. The contrarian in me refused to do that, and it hurt my success on a good number of outings.
I’ve said it before that the baseline goal every season for me is to make sure I find at least 1 24’ each brown each season. Of course, like any passionate fisherman, I find myself each season wanting more than that. With each season, I continue to believe more and more that the spey rod and swinging flies is a way to realistically accomplish that. No other method lets you cover big or deep water more effectively with a more diverse array of flies, and also offers a unique presentation the fish are not commonly seeing. It’s a way to fish larger patterns deep, without snagging up, and in water that isn’t fast enough to be nymph water/deep and tough to cover any other way; and which streamers ripped from a boat or on foot via 1-handed rod just isn’t producing reactions from the fish you think live there.
BIGGER FISH ON DRIES:
From a dry fly standpoint- there’s only two ways that you are going to get a bigger fish than you usually end up having serve as the fish of your season on every other prior year you have fly-fished. Those two ways are you have to start fishing somewhere else than where you normally do to find bigger fish on the surface, or you have to start doing something different in the same places you always fish to allow you to better identify the fish you are searching for and get them. You cannot repeat the same process over and over with give or take the same results, and think that by sheer chance the results will be different this year. That brings us back to the fat dude that never gets skinny analogy.
This winter is cold and seems very similar to last. To me, I translate that to mean that bugs are going to be mediocre at best to bad again this upcoming spring due to ice and extreme conditions. The only positive to that is that it’s a repeat of the most recent season we just had- so we have the benefit of learning from our mistakes playing the same exact game we just played. I will focus on specific pools and remain nimble in my approach where if its not happening somewhere, I can get out of there, reposition in another pool or stretch I think is a better alternative and “microclimate” spot that tends to have something going that same day. I’m not going to be stubborn again this season thinking its going to happen, even when it’s clear that it’s not. With the boat, I’m going to be more patient before putting in. I’d rather drive around and assess what’s happening and be the last boat down, than the first boat in and unsure whether that’s the right call too early on in the day.
If hatches are poor, often the places that do have bugs are the places that are consistent for a reason and most crowded. In those instances, being very off pace with other anglers is important. Wade where boats won’t be until a certain point in the day. Rotate to where the boats are past for sure by a certain part in the day later on to find relative space on a pressured river during prime time. High water makes that more complicated, but the factor remains important. People jam into the limited places that are consistent when everything is for the most part fishing subpar. You have to get off schedule with the masses and find a way to find your nook with water that likely has a large fish. Large fish will always gravitate to those places that due to logistics aren’t being fished when the bugs and river is active/alive during that time of the season. They are conditioned to go there after being in the wrong place leads to them being disturbed day after day. If a rat in a cage has a fork in the road and goes left 3x only to find out he gets shocked every time, he will start to go right. A big fish on a small or medium sized stream that happens to be under the bush with another tree above it that has branches hanging out in a way that makes the cast and drift impossible- he isn’t there because he knows what is on the bank. He is there because he knows when he is there, he doesn’t get shocked. So he likes it there and stays until someone figures out how to approach him from that location. You have to find those places the fish view as safe, but also don’t present an impossible scenario to present to them and get them to eat.
Being willing to sacrifice a major portion of the fishing day to be in the exact place you want to be for the time of day that you think a window of opportunity will present itself is also an example of discipline that can overall for the day- or season produce special fish and better than average results. Example: You go up to the Catskills on Friday night and wake up Saturday morning. You’re excited and ready to fish- weather is bright sun not a cloud in the sky and temps reaching 78 degrees as a high. Wind is moderate 8-10 mph during day, dropping to calm conditions later in the day. You have your drift boat and want to float- so you just put in somewhere figuring ok it’ll be good later on in the day when the sun goes down a bit. What you just did with that plan is make sure when it does get good, you’ll be in the same part of the float that every other boat is in for the event you have been waiting for all day. Instead, you could bounce around to kill time knowing it’s not going to be good for a while, plan being to get to a pool and place around 4:30-5. You set up there, you know it’s in a zone that no boats are coming through that time of day they’re well downstream and there isn’t a ramp close to you on the downstream side. You get there and the wind drops as planned, you see spinners starting to show being a warm late afternoon/evening, and you’re set up with no human factor to consider on jockeying for position on fish/rowing down to fish to fish the boats in front of you literally just hit. You have it to yourself and pick the best fish you see. These logistics and decisions matter for how the key window of a day goes for you and the fish you see.
Specific to this season, and being cynical about the quality of hatches to come in 2026 here in the northeast, I personally am going to be prepared to resort to the spey/streamers more often and quicker than I did last season knowing the conditions and set up is almost identical to last year. The spey offers more variation in how you can present flies mid-day to try and target quality fish even when bug life is disappointing- when compared to streamers that some days/set ups just aren’t going to move fish. (Different perspective: for the habitual angler- if your favorite areas fished poorly last year, and again are showing same issues this spring; this is more incentive for you to actually break your routine and try that new place that you have thought about in the back of your mind for years and never commit to. You’re not missing anything special).
KEEPING A REALISTIC PERSPECTIVE FOR EXPERIMENTS AND EFFORTS MADE TO FIND VERY BIG FISH:
When something isn’t producing what you hoped for, you have to change something. This is a core principal of actually getting better as a fly-fisherman. You cannot do the same shit over and over and expect different results. Yes, is there some variation year to year with what you’re doing and how well it can produce? Absolutely. But if you are always hitting the ceiling every year in the same range of fish size, the fact is you have to accept what you are doing is not targeting fish bigger than those you commonly catch. You need to switch something up. Is it the water you are fishing? With dries, is it the fact that you just are impulsive and have an issue with being patient to select the best target on the surface that is bigger than the other 12 fish rising within range of you at the same time? Are you wasting your time fishing to fish that are nice or big, but not real big fish? On the days that the bugs are heavy, conditions are right, the river is alive- you need to raise your standards. Don’t be the person that looks for rises, and thinks any dimple that clearly isn’t a dink, but definitely isn’t special is the ring you are going to cast to in order to feel good about yourself. Be willing to walk past 25-50-100 fish, if they are all cookie cutters and none are noses that are obviously over 20’’ on a river that has fish of that size. Maybe consider leaving the place entirely if there’s 100 fish that aren’t special. That isn’t crazy, that’s being honest that you are focused on your goal. It’s not just getting some fish like that guy that is simply thankful he has a day on the water and his calendar didn’t get away from him this year. It’s getting the fish you want.
Trying extremely big/oversized patterns subsurface/unconventional methods and approaches/ or fishing water that has some very big fish but not many requires patience and a realistic understanding when it comes to expectations on time that will be required to even test a theory on that water. Looking for a fish of a lifetime or even just a few fish a season that are bigger than most and not the ones everyone sees and gets each season, requires acknowledging that there will be days you don’t get into a fish. These may be days that those fishing like a normal human being on mainstay stretches of water caught a ton of fish and are all talking about it at the local hangout after the day is done. You have to accept that isn’t your goal and it doesn’t mean you made the wrong decision. You are fishing to get 5 fish or less a season that are fish no one really ever gets. If you get 1 or more of those fish on a given year, your approach was successful. If you don’t get that fish, you didn’t necessarily fail, it might be a few years to finally get that fish that matters and makes it all worth it. Would you trade 80% of the 15-20’’ browns you have caught over the last 3 years to get one 30’’ brown in that same time period? I would. That mentality is the one required to actually get a fish that hasn’t been caught by other anglers one or more times that same season. You can’t do the same things other anglers do and expect to catch that fish either. You can’t do the same shit you have been doing and think you’re going to suddenly do better. How do you differentiate what you’re doing versus everyone else, and why does that difference matter and make sense for purposes of finding that special fish? That is the question you ask yourself now, at the start of the year if your goal is to land a fish that is in another class beyond what is commonly caught and found on the waters you fish. Don’t ever be the guy that thinks cutting off a white streamer and going to a black streamer of similar size is the magical solution to a problem. Think harder, be creative, be honest about whether you are doing this just for stimulation and being engaged in something in the outdoors- aka you don’t really care if you get better at this or not………..or whether you are really trying to break your personal best. Tony Robbins signing off.
You must be logged in to post a comment.