Just a few weeks ago, I made a six-hour drive to Western Pennsylvania to target brown trout on a very famous tailwater. The day before I departed, of course, a massive line of storms swept through dumping buckets of rain across the entire state. Almost every river I drove over and along was cresting its banks and chocolate brown. The good news was that because we were fishing a tailwater with flows controlled by a dam, our river wouldn’t be chocolatey. But to keep the reservoir in check, the flow was bumped overnight from a meager 3,000 cubic feet per second to a raging 9,000 cubic feet per second. This presented a big problem.
I’m sure many of you have felt this pain. It’s opening day of the season, or your annual trout trip with the boys, or just a rare day off mid-week, but in a flash your local river gets blown out. Your fantasy of plucking trout on nymphs behind your favorite rock evaporates when you realize wading over to it would be far too dangerous, if not impossible.
High water events are, however, a blessing and a curse in the trout game. The trick to using them to your advantage is understanding what the fish will do and how they’ll behave during the three stages of a spike.
The Initial Bump
Common thinking is that when a river swells quickly, the trout will seek shelter out of the elevated current and move to the soft edges of the flooded banks. That’s not incorrect, but the reality is that they won’t go there immediately after a big bump. Whether it’s a free stone stream, a tailwater, or a limestone river, the fish will remain right where you left them when the water conditions were better.
This, of course, doesn’t make catching them any easier. Now, the mid-river eddy behind that rock where you hit them two days ago is deeper, the current around it is swifter, and the water is likely stained if not filthy. Presenting to those fish is now much trickier, but even if you adjust your approach, you’re likely going to have to bounce your offering right off their noses to get them to eat. The game becomes more a law of averages — beat the water long enough, make enough casts, and eventually you might wind up in front of a snout, but don’t expect them to move or chase.
The bigger lesson here, though, is that trout don’t like sudden change. They hunker down and it takes time for them to reorganize, reposition, and get comfortable in the higher flows. Eating right after a huge bump is not usually a priority, so the bottom line is that fishing immediately following a sudden spike isn’t usually very fun or productive. A day or two after that spike, however, it’s a different story.
The Initial Drop
Based on observations I’ve made while fishing local rivers under every condition imaginable, I think fish eventually move because of hunger.
A trout may have been perfectly comfortable in its mid-river lane, gobbling nymphs and baitfish as they passed by at the perfect speed. But the high flow has changed all that, and the fish know that if the water’s not dropping, they need to move to find food.
Enter the classic “pushed to the banks” scenario. Any serious trout angler will tell you that when the fish slide into the soft, swollen banks, it can create some of the most magical fishing you’ll ever experience. The fish become predictable, and you can spend your entire day focusing on calm bank edges and absolutely hammering. Trout know that these soft edges are where baitfish will go to avoid the current. Likewise, it will be easier to find terrestrial insects, frogs, and even drowned mice pushed to these soft edges by the increased current. But to hit the sweet spot you’ve got to get your timing down.
When a major rain event blows up your river, monitoring online flow gauges is your ticket to the bite window. Give the river a day or so to start dropping and pay close attention to how many CFS per day it’s falling. If the flow rate isn’t changing at all, that’s okay, too, but you still need to give the water some time to clear a bit and for the fish to get hungry and move.
The Fall-Out
During that trip to Western Pennsylvania, my buddy and I stuck four trout in two days. Our success was simply a product of beating the runs where he had them at lower water. We cast over and over with streamers and jerkbaits until we pulled a bait directly in front of a face.
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Despite the river having that subtle, minty green stain many trout anglers love, not once did a fish arc up to the surface to snatch a lure, run up on one boat side, or roll around one and miss. They were simply glued in place. Within three days, though, in poured photos of my friend’s success in the same flow but in areas where we felt they should have been but hadn’t yet arrived. So, once the trout settle into a new routine, how long does it last?
Regardless of water height, trout (and all moving-water fish, for that matter) crave stability. Fishing will always be more productive during long spans of consistent conditions. In the case of a tailwater where flows are controlled by the hand of man, it’s easier to track and maintain the conditions. But let’s say you’re hammering along the banks of your local stream following a high-water event.
In my experience, clarity now becomes a key factor in how long fish will stay in their high-water haunts. Naturally, a rapid drop in flow will knock them off the banks and back to mid-river lairs, but stained or colored water plays as much of a role in creating juicy high-water fishing as height.
If baitfish are still more comfortable in soft bank edges, and if they still feel camouflaged, it’s likely the trout will still hunt these areas, too. That’s why any time the water is stained, it’s worth fishing close before fishing far. Never rush to a mid-river run if the water has color, because until it clears completely, there’s a good chance you’ll find fish close to the bank or in shallower areas that don’t usually hold them under clear conditions.
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