The first brown of the year was by far the hardest to catch

   

For the last couple of weeks I have been targeting brown trout on at least one of my days off. This week was no exception, in my quest for 30 species, browns fit into the category just under sure bet (sure bets are fish like bluegill, yellow perch, carp and stripers, fish I am definitely going to catch every year). Browns are in the category of “if I put in enough time I should easily get one”. Unfortunately, I have put in a lot of time and before today…no brown trout to show for it.

So I set out on my weekly pilgrimage Thursday. I planned on hitting a few lakes. I was going to fish in Plymouth early and when the stocking report came out from Mass Wildlife, decide whether or not I would go to the Cape. My first stop was Fearings. Last week I could not access this pond because the road was being paved. This week access was easy on the smooth new asphalt. What was not easy was catching fish. The weather was perfect. It was warm and cloudy. The surface was flat because there was no wind to speak of. There were bugs hatching all over the surface.

   In the two hours I was there I only saw three trout jump. That’s it! I only caught a few sunfish on my fly rod. I tried near shore and way out with my spinning gear. About 10:30 I checked the report and saw Lout and Little had been stocked. I couldn’t get to Lout last week either because of some other road work. I figured I’d give those two lakes a shot.

   When I arrived at Lout a guy with a canoe was cleaning a fish on the shoreline. I thought “this looks promising”. He said it was a brown… even better. Then he told me they were very fussy. Cocky me thought “I’ll figure it out”.

   On my first cast I had a very solid hit but missed it. I thought “All right I’ve got a school in front of me”. And I did, I could see fish, sometimes swimming within feet of the shoreline. They were fussy as the fisherman said. I didn’t get any from shore.

   So I launched my kayak and covered the shoreline with my spinning gear and mixed in a few casts on the long rod. In two hours casting everything I had, I had three hits. I think they were hitting with their mouth closed. All the hits were smashed but there wasn’t anything to show for it.

   Finally I hooked a brown trout on a firetiger Roostertail. After playing the foot long fish way too carefully I netted my first brown of the year. I took a couple pictures and let it go. I was so relieved I almost left. I then casted with my spinning gear another ten minutes without a hit.

   I decided to fish the small area of shoreline that I caught that fish with a fly. The fly of choice was a size 10 olive beadhead wooly bugger. I figured I’d give them some meat. Although to be honest I didn’t plan on catching anything else.  To my astonishment I did catch them. I landed fourteen more trout in the next 90 minutes on the bugger. I also figured out where the fish were. Almost everything I caught was within three feet of the shoreline. Some of my hits were in six to eight inches of water. It was a blast. I couldn’t “sight fish”, but I could watch my fly and see it get smashed. I probably missed another ten hits, sometimes reacting too quickly to seeing the fly get wacked.

   Fishing is a funny game. I’ve spent entire days looking for this species of fish the last couple weeks. Thursday I went four hours of solid fishing in lakes THAT HAD BROWNS without a fish. Then all of the sudden all hell breaks loose and I catch them as fast as I could get them in for an hour and a half. I was soaked from fish splashing while trying to land them. I even caught one on my last cast so who knows how many fish were in that thirty feet of shoreline. I guess that’s why I love it… you just never know when it’s going to be great!