Summer fly fishing in WNY

Last week the kids and I had the chance to meet my good friend Lucas Carroll and his daughter at a local inland trout stream to feed the trout. And if any of you have ever taken more than one child out fishing at a time, then you know things can get a little dicey from time to time - Especially when it is the first time this summer that all three kids have been out fishing together. But I must say, even with a more stressful environment, it worked out just fine, and the fishing wasn’t too bad either.

There were no fish steadily rising, save a very select few that would take something off the water we couldn’t see off the far bank. And even those few trout only rose once, maybe twice, the whole time we were there. So that meant if we wanted to get into fish, it would have to do it while prospecting with a nymph.

Small pheasant tail nymphs in size #18 and midge patterns in size #20 proved to be the best flies of the day. We fished these under small indicators with light tippets and a few small shot to keep the flies in the feeding zone. We even were able to sight fish to some, which provided a bit more excitement than the blind fishing we would do in the pools.

Jonathan managed a few nice trout on his new JP Ross 8 foot 5 weight Blue Line fly rod fishing a small midge pattern, while Luke and I hooked a few fish using small nymphs. This went well for a while until Luke decided to break out his Sage TXL-F 000 and went to dry fly fish a nice stretch of broken water just upstream from our pool. And within a few minutes he hooked a nice fish on a stonefly pattern and landed it. We took a few photos and sent it back home. That one fish was the only dry fly caught fish of the day!

The day ended well with flurry of nice fish caught in the last hour, including a gorgeous deeply colored 16 inch male brown trout caught by Lucas. I also had a blast catching a good number of fish on my JP Ross Beaver Meadow 7 foot 2 weight. I had not fished that rod for a while, but a fly line from Lucas, and a quick set up job on-stream got me right back into the ultra light fly fishing game. And boy was it fun!

For more photos, make sure to check out Lucas Carroll’s photo page here!