Fall Inland brown trout on the fly

Michael Simmons with his inland beauty

Fall fishing for inland trout is one of my favorite kinds of fly fishing to do. One; the stream is almost void of people. And two; the fishing can be outstanding. The only bad part of fall fishing the inland trout streams is that little voice in the back of your head telling you that you need to get out to a Lake Ontario tributary in search of the first salmon of the fall. But experience tells me that adventure is still a little bit down the road.

So…….

Last week on Monday, Michael Simmons of Guys, Flies &Pies and I hit up an inland trout stream for a last ditch effort to convince some of the local brown trout to eat some flies before the lake fish in our neck of the woods make a run for it.

We arrived at location X to witness several trout feeding on trico spinners. A few delicate casts with the JP Ross Beaver Meadow two weight lined with 6X tippet and a #22 black trico spinner pattern promptly put those fish down. But all was not lost as we witnessed a good number of fish sitting near the bottom of a very nicely shaded pool….time to switch it up!

The fish in the pool were now our target and we went at them for a while with various nymphs trying to get the precision drift necessary to get them to eat. But when you have fish stacked on top and next to each other it is more difficult than one might imagine.

We each managed a few really nice trout, with Mike getting the big fish of the day. In fact he boasts that it is probably one of the biggest inland trout he has caught to date! And it was a gorgeous inland wild brown of almost 15” inches.

Enjoy the photos of some of WNY’s finest wild brown trout!

Note: With all the cool and wet weather we have had lately, it won’t be long until we have our first good run of lake run salmon and trout in WNY. I will try and get out and find time to get accurate reports when this happens.

Tight lines!