I remember standing thigh-deep in the Missouri River one afternoon, changing spools on my reel. That's a tricky maneuver. More on how to do that later.
The breeze (you'd call it wind in other places) had just died down and every blue-winged olive mayfly in that stretch of river decided it was time to hatch. The trout in the channel between weed beds I had been fishing with a streamer decided to eat them.
I'd seen big trout get silly like that before. When there are hoards of blue-winged olives on the surface big trout can go after them like kindergartners eating jelly beans, and ignore the steak you're throwing at them underneath. There's a tipping point, where your best chances at a big fish are to fish underneath the hatch, but these fish were beyond that.
It was a truth-or-dare moment. The trout I could see rising wanted nothing to do with that streamer.
When there's very little happening on the surface during the fall I'm usually fishing a streamer. The trout are on the prowl – fattening up for winter. Water temperatures are in a comfortable range for them; they're not sulking through tepid latesummer middays at the bottoms of their pools. You'll usually find them in four to six feet of water depth, if not closer to the surface. If you get a streamer three feet deep or so they'll usually take it.
My favorite autumn streamers are a #4 Black Conehead Wooly Bugger, a good sculpin pattern in #4 or #6, a #8 black, brown, or olive Janssen Marabou Leech, and a #8 bright red marabou matuka with a gold or pearl braid body, or an old-timey #8 Mickey Finn. When redside shiners spawn in October, that red fly is murderous – or could be. Pinch your barbs and sharpen your hooks.
You can fish these flies with a floating line but a sink-tip line often makes the job easier and more effective. I want that sinking tip portion of the line to be as heavy as possible – otherwise what's the point? I'll put up with open loops and slow, clumsy casts for the results it brings.
Autumn mayfly hatches can be glorious. We're talking #18 blue-winged olives, #14 mahogany duns, maybe a few leftover #10 hecubas, or in the mornings, another #20 trico spinner fall. On occasion we might see enough giant orange caddis to warrant having some bushy orange-bodied dries along.
Pack your fly box with nymphs, emergers, and dry patterns for these hatches. You don't want to be without when the fish are zeroed in on one stage of the hatch.
Oh – and how to change spools in the middle of the stream? First, take your fly off and reel in. Don't be lazy and reel the fly though the guides. It doesn't work. Reel the leader onto the center of the spool – always good advice. Put the spool you just took off in a pocket and secure it. Then, and only then, take spool #2 out of its pocket.
Change spools. Pull about two rod lengths of line plus the leader off the spool.
Now comes the tricky part: Don't do the seemingly sensible thing and unjoin your rod with intent to string each piece separately and then join them. You don't want to drop a rod section in the river; it'll leave you feeling embarrassed and silly for trying – and it could happen. And don't try to thread the line through the overbent tip of the rod. I watched a companion break his rod tip doing that. The rod snapped just as I was yelling "No!" Too late.
Here's what you do instead: double the line about four feet above the leader knot. Thread the line loop through the guides below the middle of the rod. Then, with your thumb pointed toward your reel and the heel of your hand pointed toward the rod tip, as if you were using the butt of the rod as a pointer, grab the rod below the middle ferrule. The rod butt will easily support the weight of the reel, and you'll barely bend the tip.
You can then extend your hand, arm, and rod to the side as you thread that loop through the remaining guides. When the line loop is finally through the tip guide, pull the rest of the line straight out of the tip. Don't bend the tip.
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