August Trout are the toughest fish to catch in the entire world, maybe even in the entire universe. This applies even when you are fishing Utah's beautiful trout streams and rivers.
This time of year there is so much food in the water, they just ignore your fly… “not really hungry today after that grasshopper last night….yawn.”
But I was here to trial new patterns, so we moved from stream to stream evaluating the new flies against the August Trout.
Sometimes we would see if a pool held fish by catching a grasshopper from the swarms that seemed to be everywhere and pitching it into the current. If a fish rose and gobbled it up, we knew they were active. This was followed by a carefully placed cast to see if I could get an August Trout to hit one of the new patterns.
Even then the fishing was very challenging, and don't think the obvious answer was to throw a grasshopper fly. The fish would bump it with their nose to see if it was real. Sometimes they would even take a real grasshopper and then spit it out a few seconds later. Unbelievable.
The first good fish came by stripping the Ash Special Red with a small split shot at the nose. This is one of my best trout flies and I was using it to locate the fish before switching over to a new test pattern.
18 Inch Rainbow
This should have made me realized the bigger fish were holding deep, but it took until the next morning before we started using weighted streamers exclusively.
Once we switched over and began casting tight against the shady streambanks, fishing really took off.
His heavy 21 inch rainbow hit the new Balanced Bear fly which is available on the website as a custom pattern. It is tied with a tungsten bead similar to a balanced leech but with a Bear River Tackle design.
This is an excellent fish for Utah’s streams and small rivers so if you don't think the August Trout can be caught, I encourage you to give it a try.
The secret is to keep moving and switching between different flies until you find the fish and figure out what they want.
Also, when you can enjoy beautiful country and share time with friends, it is always a wonderful trip!
Go Fly Fishing!
Glenn Personey
President
Bear River Tackle
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