During the late Summer and early Fall, many trout streams become very low due to the lack of rainfall. In these cases, if the air temperatures become very hot, trout streams can get low of oxygen in bad condition and fishing can become very tough and stressful on the trout when you are successful in hooking one.
If the water temperature is not too warm and catching trout isn’t going to place too much stress on the trout, you can be sneaky and make good presentations you can still catch plenty of fish. By too warm, I mean water temperatures that are over seventy degrees F. Everyone is probably aware that you should stay low, dress correctly and stay hidden from the trout. Those things are basic for fishing small streams, especially under low water conditions. What prompted this
writing is a factor that I think many anglers overlook.
If you move extremely slow, the trout are far less likely to notice you. Trout can see almost all the way around themselves. There’s only a small area directly behind them, called the blind spot, that is not within their peripheral vision. I have found that as long as you move extremely slow, they won’t notice you in their peripheral vision area of coverage nearly as quickly as they will when you move at a normal
pace. By that I mean not only move you body very slowly, but refrain from the
making the movements necessary to cast. Low, side arm and low roll cast made while wading help avoid the trout seeing your or your rod’s movement.
By using this the low side arm cast procedure, you can often approach trout in extremely clear water. I have fished spring creeks in Pennsylvania and Montana using this procedure without spooking them, but doing so is not easy. Moving at a slow, slow pace is not easy to do. It seems you will never get into a position to cast and then when you do, you must do so with the flip of a wrist, side-armed and very low. That means you can’t cast very far and that means you have to get very close to them. I have caught brown trout as close as fifteen feet from me in shallow, extremely clear water, looking at the fish when I was standing my full height which is six feet, two inches.
Most of the time I make the mistake of moving too fast. I am not very patient any way and fishing at the pace of a snail isn’t easy for me to do. What I am describing is not a cure all for catching fish in low, clear water by any means. Casting to a trout may take a few minutes of ultra slow-motion movement before you attempt the first and only cast you will get. If I am on the bank, I usually stoop down to my knees in slow motion when I do get close to the fish and then cast side-armed with as
little body movement as possible.
Please note that I’m not contending that this is the way to fish normal, low water conditions. I don’t think that extent of extreme caution is necessary in most cases. I do wish to stress the point that trout do not notice your presence by identifying or determining that you are some type of creature from out of space that is going to harm them. Without turning and placing you in their very narrow binocular area of vision, they cannot see you well enough to determine anything other than something is in their area that doesn’t belong there.
If you were in the woods observing the forest and one of the trees suddenly moved a couple of feet, you would spook. If a tree started moving towards you at a rather fast pace, you would really freak out. When a portion of the trout’s surroundings suddenly moves, it will freak out. Slow your movements way down and you will catch more trout under low water conditions.
Another little used method is to drift the fly downstream to fish. It helps to spot one rising so you can target it as opposed to blind casting but both approaches can be successful. The key is to not let your fly line cross over a fish’s position. Only the leader or better, only the tippet should do that or otherwise, you will be done with that trout. Just make a little short cast and feed the line downstream to likely position that may hold trout. Mend the line to place the fly at least a couple of feet or more either left or right of the line of the drift of the fly line. This method is commonly used on the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River in Idaho where the water is smoother and slick such as it is in the old railroad ranch section.
Trout still eat in low, warmer, clear water. In fact, they need more food under these circumstances than they normally do. The single most important thing to keep in mind is to always fish water that is highly oxygenated, not slow moving still water regardless of the depth. Plunge pools, riffles and runs will hold feeding trout under low, warm water conditions.
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