Five Tips for Catching Spooky Trout
When the water gets low or warm, or you have a bright blue jay day, trout tend to get very weary and spooky. Making it more difficult, sometimes impossible, to catch fish. Here are some helpful tips for catching and approaching these spooky fish.
- Watch your wading. Sloppy and rough wading have saved more trout than any regulation written by man. When the water is low they are even more tuned into sloppy wading. Try to wade like the Great Blue Heron, lift one foot up place it gently back on the stream bed then move the other foot in the same manner.
- Stay out of the water. Stay as far out of the water as you can. The more waves that run over the fish the more they spook. So stay as close to the bank as possible.
- Make every cast count. The more casts that splash down on a trout’s head or the more times you rip your line off of the surface of the water, the more fish you are spooking. So make your first cast the best one. Try to mend your cast in the air so that you are not making the mend on top of the fish in shallow water. If you have a heavy current and a lot of white water the disturbance of picking up and mending or recasting does not matter as much.
- Watch your shadow. In low water the trout are more likely to be scooped up by large birds, Heron’s, Eagle’s and Osprey’s. They are very aware of any shadow that may come across them and dart for cover often spooking the other fish in the hole.
- Try to fish in lower light conditions. Fishing early and late will help you in several factors; the fish feel safer and lie in slightly more open areas because they are not as visible to other predators. Also you do not have to worry about your shadow and your movements are not as accentuated by the bright sun.