Summer fishing conditions brings everything to a lull. In most places you can’t fish, and in the places you can fish the crowds and repetitive nature found on these pressured waters makes you mentally check out at some point. You are fishing to pets that have been pounded day in and day out since this part of the season kicked in, you know it, and it gets old.
There are subtle transitions that occur though in the month of August when it comes to the east. Depending on the season, but during most seasons, you start to see low night time temps drop sometime around the middle to later end of the month. You sometimes get a few days that have that type of breeze that lets you feel that fall is coming. And of course the days get shorter, with peak air temps lasting for a shorter duration in the afternoons before cooling down earlier in the day. During this time, some rivers that were too warm to fish start to become fishable again. When this transition first begins, you often have one of the most underrated hatches in the east occurring, that being the Light Cahill hatch. Whether it be the fact that the hatch happens late in the evening providing usually 45 minutes or less of steady dry fly action, or the fact that many anglers have checked out all together by the time it comes off late in the summer season, the hatch is one that you never hear people mention when talking about their favorite hatch to fish. But the 45 minutes you get is worth it, and a welcomed change of pace being a large bug the fish are willing to eat consistently after you’ve likely been fishing small, techy stuff all summer on 6x or lighter.
In addition, usually before the steady dry fly rise begins in the late evening on Cahills, you have the opportunity to fish other bugs. By late August, whether you are seeing them or not the fish are looking for and/or willing to take Iso’s blind in the fast water. Add in the fact that quality riffles and runs at the end of August are usually easy to identify with lower flows, and you are able to very much target the runs that are going to hold fish. To avoid any potential argument that this is unethical, I want to be clear that I’m not talking about targeting fish in drought conditions when the water is 70 degrees. With the conditions I eluded to above, often times you see water temps on some higher volume streams in the northeast drop to the mid 60’s, and there are certain streams where the fish are downright adapted and comfortable in those water temps- the main stem of the Delaware being one of them. Hook an 18” rainbow in the freezing 52 degree upper west branch in July and you will get an almost brown trout like fight- maybe a mild run and then reel that fish in. Hook a 15” rainbow on the Mainstem in 67-68 degree water and you will get smoked. The fish are adapted to those water temps and as long as you have an adequate landing net, keep the fish in the water, and release the fish properly I am confident in publically writing you are not fishing in an unethical manner that will harm those fish.
If you are one that likes to target large browns, which I am, the late August/Early September dry fly window that occurs in the fall transition is your last realistic chance to target large browns on the dry. For one reason or another, the big browns in the east become incredibly difficult, if not impossible to find on the surface after a certain point in the early fall, with that line in the sand in my experience being somewhere around the 2-3 week in September. After that time, the pre-spawn urge pushes these fish to subsurface food items, and almost every fish you find rising after that time will be a rainbow trout or a juvenile brown trout no bigger than 15” or so. Exception being stocked streams where the fish don’t have the same seasonal instincts as wild fish. And I’ll be honest, I really don’t care if I catch another rainbow trout ever again. I want that big brown.
This transition from summer to fall provides a much needed change of pace. You go from fishing the most condensed, pressured trout water in whatever region you are fishing, to suddenly having options again. You go from having to change flies 20 times in an attempt to match a single bug that’s usually very small, to suddenly being able to fish 3-4 flies consisting of a size 12 light cahill, a size 12 Iso, a size 20 blue winged oive, and some type of spinner pattern and keep it simple with larger flies on heavier tippet that all will likely work on a given fish. (Below is a big brown my buddy Ian Savage took while out with Guide Ryan Furtak last year on an Iso in early September).
Coming out of a marginal time of year also allows you to narrow down where the best fish is likely to be in precise terms. By late summer, the best fish have taken over prime lies and will undeniably be there. They are usually in current, but at a point in the current where there is added depth or structure to add an additional element of safety as a defense. And you can lock in there, knowing the top end fish is there and that a steady hatch the fish tend to love is going to come off in set your watch style. With less than an hour to capitalize on the dry fly window during this time, positioning yourself in the prime spot to begin with, rather than getting distracted with dinks rising sporadically in the mid evening hours and just covering the water generally, is important if you want to take full advantage of the short time you’ll have when the bugs and real hatch starts. The fact that these revived stretches were not fishable for a couple months or more prior to the fall transition makes these waters and the fish that are holding there recently unpressured, also a nice change of pace after dealing with fish that are refusing naturals along with your flies during the mid summer months. Like a dog that barks at you twice when you come in the door twice within 5 minutes, fish have a short memory. This summer break due to less than optimal conditions causes the fish in these stretches to feed hard when the bugs show each evening and they are not selective. You can assume in most occasions that a good drift with any of the 4 flies I mentioned above is going to draw a strike, and since that’s the case I’d start with the Iso/Light Cahill first for the added hook. I tend to find both Iso and Cahill activity to be best in the riffles down to the transitional section of a given pool, which aligns with where the trout are likely to be at this time of year, so focus on the upper portion of the pool you’re fishing, not the traditional flat dry fly water you’d customarily set up on. I also find that Iso’s and Cahills tend to be more prolific hatches on faster, freestone streams. So you won’t necessarily see these bugs or get the window I’m talking about if you stick to the cold tailwater stretches that have been beat to death and have the smaller bugs, high volume hatches you’ve been seeing all summer.
Lastly, while I know I favor the dry fly game, I’ll be the first to admit that the nymphing to be had when the fall transition first starts to happen is downright phenomenal. Again, you have prime runs that are easy to identify and the fish are going to be there limiting the guesswork of reading water and picking apart select pockets. A final thing I’ve found is that late August might be some of the best and underrated streamer fishing window I know, though again a very short window during the day for purposes of capitalizing on. While the real fall sometime in mid to late September is thought of as the time that browns get aggressive prior to the spawn, my experience is that this aggression kicks in well before that. I even see changes in the appearance and coloration of the browns starting around the third to last week of August on many rivers, indicating that the pre spawn process for them has already begun. Often, in late August I’ll get up before sunrise to be on the water when daybreak hits. I fish a floating line with a smallish streamer on a long 10-12 foot straight piece of lighter than I’d normally fish tippet due to lower flows and fish education after a long season (2-3x) . I fish smaller and simple streamers, since the water isn’t high and the fish can still be spooky. A simple black or white bugger, or even classics like a large grey ghost/mickey finn with a little weight tied in the body, and I will often move 20 or more fish in a morning with some days being better than others on converting versus short strikes. I find a fast strip to get the fish committed to the fly once they see it also helps increase the number of true takes rather than short strikes and mere reactions to the fly. Streamer fishing like anything else, and perhaps more than any other method, is pressure related. And by August, the fish have not seen a streamer from anyone for months going back likely to April or May. Add in the fact that the aggression factor is beginning in them, and gun to my head I believe it begins in late August, you have the elements present to do very well on streamers in low light conditions. The window is usually only an hour or two, and best in the morning, but you can do a days work in those two hours on simple patterns that don’t spook the fish or seem ridiculous in late summer conditions. (My buddy Ben below with a large wild tiger trout that he took on streamer on August 6th at a time that cooler nights had already set in. One of many large fish landed that morning on streamers before the light hit the water)
In closing, I want to emphasize that checking conditions and actual temps this time of year is critical, and not just from an ethical perspective. If the water temps haven’t come down to that mid 60’s range, the bugs are unlikely to be there anyway. And each season is different, especially now with the more erratic seasonal swings we seem to have. A cooked summer with no rain and water temps pinned in the 70’s for July and August often means the fish don’t get right for the rest of the season, and you’ll see that by the weight of fish you take on the last olive hatches of the season in October when the water is in the 50’s and has been for several weeks. But on an average year, and normal summer with heat but some thunderstorms in the mix and cooling night temps (cooler starting temps for northeast waters), the fishing is sneaky good.
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