Night Game Tips

I’d like to be completely transparent about my night fishing experience level, prior to about 3 years ago, most of it occurred in the early 2000s when me and some friends would sneak onto golf courses around Penn State to catch bass on the ponds. Three years ago, I started fishing a lot more at night for trout, mostly because we had our second child and that was the best time to go without feeling guilty about leaving my wife at home all day. In the past three years, I have done quite a few trips, not only on my drift boat, but also wade fishing areas from State College to the Catskills. It will be interesting to see how much has changed when I look back on this article, but this is where I stand today.

Jim with a great brown trout caught at night

Set up

With most things fly fishing, set up will be based on the conditions of the river you are fishing. In the beginning, I used my typical streamer set up which is a sinking line and short leader, typically 2’ of 0X flouro. Although I did catch fish this way, I learned quickly that this was not ideal. First, a sinking line will wrap every shallow boulder or drop your fly into the grassy bottom a lot more at night when you can’t really see where you are casting. The only way to minimize this is to use a quicker retrieve, which isn’t always ideal in the dark. Second, fishing the bottom or near bottom is not the best place to be at night for reasons I’ll discuss later. Right now, I use a floating fly line with about 4’ of 0X flourocarbon on a 9 foot 7 weight rod. With that set up, I do not need a tapered leader and can turn streamers over without a problem.

Trout caught (not the first time) using a sinking line off the bottom at night

Depth

As previously mentioned, running the sinking fly fishing line was a major pain in my ass at night, so out of efficiency, I switched over to a floating line. I noticed after switching, that coincidentally my catch rate also increased. Could it be because I spent more time fishing my fly and less time removing grass and getting snagged, possibly. But as time went on I concluded that the fish are feeding in the top 1/3 of the water column at night. Again, not a hard, fast rule, but something I feel strongly about based on catch numbers.

Meat Eater Brown Trout

I’ve also done a ton of jigging streamers at night. I’ve used jigs with full on heavy deer hair collars to try and push water, I’ve tried some with rabbit collars as well, anything I could tie on to make a pulse of water at night. Again, I’ve caught a few fish this way, but not a lot, and in fact, I rarely take any jig streamers with me at night for that reason. My final piece of evidence for fishing the top 1/3 comes from visual confirmation. During multiple night trips, I would occasionally turn on the spot light upstream to see what we potentially floated past. Every single time I am shocked with the number of fish holding in the top 12” of water. It’s actually quite demoralizing when you realize how many fish you just passed up and couldn’t get a single one to bite.

Flies

I never look at one piece of the fly fishing set up, your rod, line, leader and fly form a system that can be adapted to how and where you want to fish. Since we want to fish near the surface, I use a lot of unweighted flies, primarily made with deer hair heads. The three most common flies I use are woolly sculpins, drunk and disorderlies, and sex dungeons. When I tie the sex dungeons, I use smaller dumbbell eyes and a I pack the heads pretty tight when I stack the deer hair. Doing this helps keep the fly near the surface.

I have a small box with a few different styles of mouse patterns. In the beginning, that’s all I used and had very little success. I know a lot of anglers that use mice at night and are very successful, I’ve just had much better luck with streamers. One of these nights I’ll fully commit to fishing a mouse pattern and see if I can manage a little more success.

Retrieves

There’s really no right or wrong answer here. If you’re not catching fish, mix it up and try something different. My default starting method for wade fishing is to cast upstream at a 45 degree angle and strip the fly back toward me across the current. I do this at a moderate pace to begin and if a fish strikes the fly, most of the time they hook themselves and I just keep on stripping. If this doesn’t work, I’ll slow the pace down on the strips until I feel like I covered the section pretty well. At that point I like to cast at 12 o’clock and get more of a swing, but I’m still trying to impart motion on the fly. I’ll do this by slowly stripping in line or wiggling the rod tip left and right. If that doesn’t work, I also like to do a very slow lazy swing and let the fly hang downstream at the end for a few seconds. To do this, I just cast downstream at a 45 and then try to give it an upstream mend the best I can in the dark.

This Brown Trout hit on an active retrieve cross current

When I’m in a drift boat, it can be tough to swing in certain flows, so I mostly cast at 12 o’clock or slightly upstream and just alter the pace of my retrieves until I find something that works, hopefully.

Critters

If I was writing this article prior to this season, I really wouldn’t have much to say here. However, on two separate occasions this season, I may or may not have slightly shat myself. The first one occurred just two weeks ago in early October and the memory is still very fresh in my mind. I anchored the boat and started wade fishing downstream in a section of river that is usually very productive for night fishing. Everything was pretty quiet, it was a clear night and I just finished working a section and walked downstream to work the middle of the run. On my second cast, I was retrieving the fly and that’s when I heard a gunshot about 5 feet behind me in the dark. My entire body jumped and I started stumbling in the water, somehow I regained my balance, grabbed my walking stick as a weapon and then turned around to see a giant ripple in the water. At that point I realized it was a beaver slapping his tail on the water trying to get me the hell out of his area. His plan worked! I started stabbing my walking stick between me and where the tail slap occurred just in case he was coming in closer and quickly got my ass back in the boat.

Two weeks prior to that, Dave and I were doing a night float and he broke off his fly on what he allegedly thinks was a fish…I turned my headlamp on the dim mode so he had enough light to tie a knot as we continued to drift down the river. We approached a downed tree, so I grab the oars and backrowed to get us just around the tip of the tree. Dave was standing up in the front of the boat tying on his fly when a pre-historic tera dactyl, also known as a heron, let out a giant screech and then took off from the front of the tree. Both of us also let out a screech and I truly thought Dave was going to fall out of the boat, the bird was no more than 5 feet from him and when he jumped back, he lost his balance and fortunately recovered. I then started uncontrollably laughing for the next ten minutes. Thankfully I was on the oars and not standing up for that surprise.

No drugs, only alcohol was involved in this photo of a brown trout, the camera flash in the dark will make your eyes do weird things.

Conclusion

If you’re thinking about night fishing, give it a try. There’s really nothing to worry about and you can keep it pretty simple. Use a floating fly line, try a deer hair fly and cover some water, you might be surprised with what you catch lurking in the dark. And all joking aside, there’s really nothing to worry about in the dark if you’re fishing in the north east, other than crazy beavers!!

Euro Rods-Do I need one?

For the first 20 years of my fly fishing career, I had a total of 3 different fly rods. The first was a Pflueger 8’ 5 weight combination kit that my parents got me from the local K-Mart when I was 13 years old. My second rod was purchased a few years later and was a 7’6” 3 weight that I upgraded to from the Pflueger. My third rod was a sage Z-Axis 8’6” 5 weight that I purchased when I was in graduate school at Penn State. Prior to going to graduate school, I was working as an engineer in Pittsburgh and used my federal tax return to purchase that rod. To this day, that is still one of my favorite fly rods!

State College 19 years ago…

Whichever rod I had in my hand was used for everything, streamers, dry flies, tight lining, or indicator fishing, it didn’t matter, that was the only rod I had. If I wanted to switch from streamers to dry flies, I’d make a few adjustments to the leaders if necessary, but that was about it. After taking the fly fishing class at Penn State during my undergrad years, I learned a lot about tight line nymphing. We did this with standard fly rods and lines and it worked, which is why I was so reluctant on purchasing any tactic specific fly rods. In my mind, I could do anything with a fast action rod and some leader adjustments, why would I waste my money on a new rod that can only nymph? Given the outdoor industry’s over marketing of everything from clothes to equipment, I just assumed these rods were more of the same.

Sage Z-Axis

As time went on, I recognized that the vast majority of my fly fishing revolved around nymphing. Where I live, we don’t get crazy hatches outside of a few short weeks and most of my free time to fish was in the winter. So eventually, I caved to the hype and decided to purchase a Thomas and Thomas contact II, 10’9” 3 weight. I’m not trying to promote this rod or brand, just letting you know what I ended up with. The feel of the rod is extremely different if you are switching over from a fast action rod. Going from a Sage to a Contact II was quite an adjustment at first, but once you learn to slow everything down, it all comes together nicely.

Efficiency

I think the main difference between a good angler and a great angler is the amount of time they keep their flies in the zone. I love watching great anglers fish, they are so efficient with every movement and cast, little time is wasted with their flies out of the water or snagged in a tree. For me, using the euro nymph rod definitely made me more efficient. Because the rods have a slower action and are softer, they are so much easier to load with a micro leader and small nymph, this improved my casting accuracy right out of the box. I want to be clear, you absolutely can cast small nymphs with micro leaders and mono rigs on a fast action rod and it can be done very effectively, I just found it easier with the euro rod. Also, the added length of the euro rod at 10’9” allows me to cover more water and get slightly longer drifts without having to change positions. Overall, my casting accuracy improved and I’m covering more water each drift, making for less casts and more efficient fishing.

Versatility

I hate carrying multiple rods on the water and my main concern with the euro rod was the lack of versatility. Recently, I was on a trip to Pennsylvania and got into a nice sulphur hatch with multiple fish rising. I removed the nymphs and tied on a single sulphur in size 16. I didn’t change a thing, my leader was nothing more than 6x tippet attached to 40 feet of 4x sighter and I was able to cast the dry fly and land 2 fish. This was only possible because I was able to get close to the fish, this central PA stream is not very wide. If I was on a different stream where I had to make a long cast and feed line, it was not happening with my euro rod and micro leader.

I do have a separate spool with 3 weight tapered fly line that I use with the rod when I want to fish indicators or cast a dry fly a little farther. For most streams that I fish, this combination has plenty of range and is very effective. I would argue that line control and mending with indicators is even easier on this rod because of the added length. Again, this isn’t ideal for long distance presentations on big water, the rod is slow action and not made for sending line a long way. Last fall in the Catskills I specifically recall not being able to reach my target with any type of line control, it was just too far and I had the rod loaded as much as I could with my casting ability. There are pros and cons to every set up!

Streamers are a totally different game so lets start with some general comments. As mentioned, the rod has a soft tip, it’s made to load easy (bend) without a lot of weight. Typically, streamers have much larger and thicker hooks than the nymphs we commonly fish, so you need to set the hook with a little more muscle. On a soft action rod, a lot of the energy in the hookset gets absorbed as the rod bends, instead of transferring down the line and penetrating the hook into the fish. If you’re fishing a nylon sighter or mono that has some stretch, the problem only gets worse. The more line you have out, the more stretch you will have in the system. You need to be very calculated in your hookset when streamer fishing using a euro rod. Other than that, you can be very effective fishing streamers on a euro set up. Most of the time, we think of jigging streamers with a euro rod, but you can also fish standard and articulating streamers on this set up. It’s all very situational on the water type and how you like to fish. I landed my biggest wild brown trout (Not Lake Run)using a streamer on a euro-rod last summer in Montana.

Montana brown streamer fishing on a Contact II 10’9” 3 weight

Conclusion

You don’t need a Ferrari to drive fast, but I’m sure it would be nice. You don’t need a euro rod either, you can use a standard rod, adjust your line and leader and get pretty effective at fishing multiple styles. However, if you spend most of your time nymphing, you might want to consider getting one. I’ve had this exact conversation with a few friends and not a single one that bought a euro rod had anything but positive comments after fishing with it. Like me, most of them use it as their primary rod as well.

It’s Friday night as I’m writing this article and my drift boat is hooked up to my truck, heading out to do a night float and fish into the next morning. My euro rod is not in my truck, I have a 9’ 7 weight with a sink tip line and a 9’ 5 weight with a floating line rigged up. After all of the positives I just told you about fishing with a euro rod, I just love casting fly line. Tonight, I plan on throwing streamers in the rain and hopefully have some bug activity in the morning where I can make some long presentations with a dry fly. That’s why I chose those two rods, it doesn’t always have to be about catching as many fish as you can, it’s also about how you like to fish and what you enjoy doing.

Leader Formulas

I’m not sure why this topic frustrates me more than anything else, but it does. Perhaps it’s because people are searching for some top secret leader formula that will help them catch more fish. Or maybe it’s the angler that thinks he needs every measurement down to the sixteenth of an inch for it to work. Let me start by stating that I’m only talking about leader formulas for tight lining/euro nymphing, whatever you want to call it.

Everything in life has trade offs. Lets talk about line size first. With nymphing leaders, the thinner you go, the less sag and drag you get, leading to better presentations. I can get much better drifts at a greater distance with a thin leader than a heavy tapered leader. The more line you have out of the rod tip with a heavy leader or euro line, the more sag you will get. Imagine tracing the shape of your leader from your rod tip to the point where it enters the water, this is a good way of visualizing sag. A heavy line will almost hang vertically off the rod tip, this weight will actually pull the flies toward you across the current. Lighter lines will not have nearly as much of an impact.

The trade off is thinner leaders can be a pain to cast. That being said, the rod you are using will have a big impact with the casting. Today’s nymphing rods are specifically designed to load with very little weight and make it so much easier to cast a lighter rig. If you are fishing a fast action rod, a tapered leader might be a better choice for you. But you have to consider the rod you are using when thinking about leader formulas for nymphing. If you have a euro nymphing rod, try running a thin leader set up and see if you like it. If it doesn’t work for you, go back to a more traditional leader, but I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Thin leaders can work well on fast action rods as well, but there is more of an art to casting than with a euro rod. I fished for years with a fast action Sage and a micro leader before purchasing my first nymphing rod.

My go to nymphing rod is a T&T contact II 10’9” 3 weight. I run about 50’ of 4x sighter to my tippet, that’s it. I’ve tried a bunch of different set ups, but found this is extremely simple and effective. If I decide to jig streamers, I may go down to 2X sighter on waters that hold larger fish.

As we already discussed, everything is a trade off. The downside with my set up is I have a very soft action euro rod along with nylon sighter that has a lot of stretch to it. I need to make sure I get a very solid hook set, especially when jigging streamers to still have enough force to penetrate the hook since the bending of the rod and the stretching of the sighter will absorb a lot of the energy from the hookset. The thin leaders also stick to the rod when the rod gets wet, this makes it very difficult to shoot line during casts. Thin sighter material can also be difficult to see relative to much larger diameter sighters. For me, I have found the pros out weigh the cons but it’s good to understand the cons so you can adjust as necessary for your style of fishing.

Next time you find yourself copying down someone’s 8 page leader formula with measurements down to the thousandths of an inch for a nymphing set up, think about your overall set up and if you think that’s really necessary. By all means try it, but I think keeping it simple helps you spend more time with your flies in the water instead of trying to retie your 9 step nymphing leader.