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!!