Mastering the Art of Patience | How One Guide Landed a 23-Inch Brook Trout
With: finns.fins
Sometimes, the key to success on the water isn't the fanciest gear or the perfect cast; it’s patience. I recently caught up with a guide who shared a story that proves just that. Between testing different fly patterns and watching a lake’s big fish refuse to bite, he showed that being patient—and paying attention to the little details—can pay off in a big way. Here’s how he landed a 23-inch, 5.4-pound brook trout after an afternoon of careful sight fishing
There is nothing more important than patience when fly fishing, if you have the ability to get to the river in the middle of a hatch and spend 10 minutes observing the fish to see how they are reacting to different bugs, where they are holding and what the best way to present your fly is, your numbers and fish size will jump dramatically. And I just used a hatch as an example; its important to take your time and observe what is happening near the water any time you go fish, no matter what the conditions are like.
One time in particular that patience has paid off for me was when me and my buddy Derek Olthuis were fishing an alpine lake with extremely big brook trout in it, there were only around 7 fish in the lake and none of them were actively feeding, so I found the fish I wanted to target and we spent the whole afternoon sight fishing to it swapping out patterns and techniques, Derek had a small white streamer hooked to velcro on his raft and he told me to tie it on and cast with it.
First cast with it we got the fish to turn and look at it but I was fishing high in the water column so we decided to make a second cast and let the fly sink to the bottom of the lake, when it hit the bottom I started doing small strips to bounce the fly up and down in the mud and a few strips in the fish came and crushed it. We caught that fish, and it ended up being a 23-inch 5.4-pound brook trout. we were able to land this fish by having patience the whole day and persevering through spooking the fish and very strong sunlight. I think that being patient as a guide makes it funnier as a client and gives them the ability to learn more about what we are doing out on the river.
