Bugger Time

This past Sunday I had the chance to do some trout fishing for a couple of hours. My buddy, Bryon, and I went to our favorite trout stream over in western Wisconsin, and had an action-packed afternoon catching multiple species on Wooly Buggers. I knew that Wooly Buggers would work well for two reasons. First of all, this particular river had been high and muddy fairly recently from a heavy rainfall, and was just getting back to normal levels and normal clarity, so the trouts would be ravenous, since they probably hadn't been eating much while the water was off color. Secondly, this river doesn't have all that much insect life, so big, meaty flies oftentimes work better than small, dainty flies.

The River

Knowing what I knew about the situation, I took some time over the previous few nights to tie up some more Buggers, so both Bryon and I would have enough. I tied up some of my old reliables, like some olive Buggers, some silver Buggers, and some of my world famous Mushroom & Swiss Buggers. I also tied up a few wine colored Buggers (Burgundy Buggers?), and I found some nice gold-and-red tinsel chenille in my stash and tied some Buggers with that. I was feeling good about the ammunition we would be going to battle with. Now we just needed the fish to be as hungry as we were hoping!

Fresh, new Buggers!

Once on the river it did not take long to find some fish that wanted to eat. I caught a nice brown after a few casts, and moved a couple more that spurned my Bugger at the last second. Unfortunately that became more of a trend throughout the day than I would have liked. I landed about a dozen trout, all browns other than one colorful brook trout, but had many more than that come and take a look at my fly and then make a hasty retreat without chomping. And, of course, all the trouts that refused to eat were far bigger than the ones I caught...

A lovely Brookie

One of Bryon's Browns.

It's not like there wasn't a good amount of action happening, though. The creek chubs were in full force. I must have landed about 20 of those, some of which were starting to turn a bright dusty pink color, in preparation for the spawn. They were almost kind of pretty... I also caught a rather nice sized crappie that was in the river for some reason. All in all, it was a good day! Catching fish on fresh, new Buggers is always a good time!

Chub.

Crappie? What's he doing in there?