Small Streams: Fishing Water You Can Step Across

Leave the nine-foot rod in the car. On a brook you can step across, almost everything you have learned on bigger water is too long, too heavy or too far away. The fish are small, wild and close; a trout of 25 cm is a good one, and it is lying four metres from your boots in water you could mistake for a puddle. Small-stream fishing is hunting more than casting, and it rewards the angler who moves slowly and fishes short.

Tackle cut down to size

Item	Choice	Reason
Rod	6–7 ft, for a 2 or 3 weight line	Fits under branches and bends properly with two metres of line out
Line	Floating, 2 or 3 weight	Lands lightly; most casts use only the front few metres
Leader	7–8 ft overall	Turns over in a tunnel of alder; a 12 ft leader will not
Tippet	5X (0.15 mm), or 4X (0.18 mm) among roots	Strong enough to pull a fly free from a twig
Flies	Sizes 14–16, barbless	Small fish, small mouths, quick release

A leader of 7–8 ft is simple to make: buy a 7.5 ft tapered leader and replace the last 50 cm with fresh tippet when it shortens. Carry one small box. A buoyant dry such as an Elk Hair Caddis or a Parachute Adams covers most days from May to September, with a Klinkhamer for broken pockets and a lightly weighted Pheasant Tail for the deeper holes. Add forceps, a spool of tippet and something to dry the fly, and that is the whole kit.

Upstream, on your knees

Always fish upstream. Trout face the current, so you come at them from behind, and the silt your boots disturb drifts away below you and not through the water you are about to fish. Stay out of the stream where you can and walk the bank, well back from the edge. Tread softly: on a small brook, footfalls on a hollow bank reach the fish before you do.

Then get low. A trout looks up through a round window in the surface that is a little over twice as wide as the fish is deep, and anything standing tall on the bank shows at its edge. A fish lying 30 cm down in clear water will see a standing angler at six metres and a kneeling one hardly at all. Kneel for every cast. Knee pads, or waders with reinforced knees, are the most useful small-stream purchase after the rod.

Two casts for tight places

There is seldom room behind you, so the overhead cast is the exception. The roll cast does most of the work: draw the rod back slowly until the line hangs in a curve behind your shoulder with the fly still on the water, then tap the rod forward and stop it high. With a short rod and four metres of line it needs no back cast at all, and tilted sideways it will slide the fly under a low branch.

Where even that is impossible, use the bow-and-arrow cast.

1. Let out line and leader to about the length of the rod and a little more. Trap the line against the cork with your rod-hand forefinger.
2. Take the fly by the bend of the hook between thumb and forefinger of the other hand, point facing away from you.
3. Point the rod at the target and draw the fly back beside your ear until the top third of the rod is bent in a deep curve.
4. Keep the rod hand still and let go of the fly. The rod straightens and throws the leader out in a tight loop.
5. Follow the fly down with the rod tip and be ready at once. The take often comes within a second.

It reaches three to four metres, which on a brook is usually enough.

One or two casts per pocket

Small-stream trout live where food is scarce and decide quickly. If a fish is at home and has not seen you, it will usually take on the first good drift. So give each pocket one cast, two at most, and move on. Ten casts into the same bucket of water only teach the fish above it that something is wrong.

On a brook the first cast into each pocket is the one that counts; the tenth only warns the fish above.

• Plunge pools. Fish the tail first, then the seams on either side of the white water, and last of all the foam at the head.
• Pockets behind stones. A drift of half a metre is enough. Hold the rod high so only the leader touches the water.
• Undercut bends. Drop the fly a hand’s width from the bank and let the current take it under.
• Shallow glides. The hardest water on the stream. Stay furthest back here and cast from the longest range you can manage.

Strike with a short lift, or you will put the fly in the branches. Then keep moving. A mile of brook in a morning, a cast or two to each likely place, is the right pace, and every fish goes back from wet hands in a few seconds. These streams hold only as many trout as they can feed.

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