Wintertime stripping for cool rainbows
Lower Illinois regular Scott Hood hunts rainbows with "The Fly That Catches Everything"
When local Trout Unlimited organizer Scott Hood dropped a text to ask if I wanted to catch 50-plus trout on a “trout fishing odyssey” it was not an offer to be refused.
No question that if Scott was guaranteeing we would catch 50+ fish I would catch at least 20—because any time we go he just typically catches a little more than twice as many as me. But I also know that wintertime fishing for rainbows at the Lower Illinois River is the best time to go.
Going to the LIR with Scott is a lot like going quail hunting on a ranch with a hunter who goes almost every weekend and knows where all the coveys should be found. If he tells you the fish are biting anything that hits the water and it’s a good day to go, you drop whatever you have planned and go.
I made that hunting comparison on purpose. Knowing your game, its habits and instincts, predicting its behavior and inserting yourself into its daily habits is what hunting is all about. It’s part of the reason I like to fish with Scott. Not just because he knows the Lower Illinois like the back of his hand but also because no matter where we go he is very much a hunter of fishes.
He likes active fly-fishing. He knows all the different techniques but he most often hunts with a tungsten-head streamer fashioned after an olive woolly bugger he has dubbed “The Fly That Catches Everything.” People who follow the Oklahoma Trout Unlimited Chapter 420 Facebook page know it as “TFTCE.”
Seriously, he has caught every species of fish on that danged fly.
On a stretch of the river below the access area at the Simp and Helen Watts Wildlife Management Unit a narrowed channel offers what a person might call a classic trout-stream experience. It has short runs and pools, plenty of current and plenty of both woody and rocky structures.
We weren’t there long before Scott dropped a TFTCE over a log and caught a rainbow, and then another one, and another. Five casts, three trout.
Before folks who don’t tie their own flies get too down-in-the-mouth here, I showed Scott what I had in my fly box and he pointed to a black marabou jig and said, “I bet that will work just fine.” He offered a TFTCE but I wanted to see what I could do with what I had.
I always have a few small crappie jigs in my fly box. I have them in black, white, yellow and black-and-yellow in 1/16- and 1/32-ounce sizes. They are kind you buy in a pack of 10 for about $3. They’re cheap and they work. Scott said has some in his boxes too.
I caught the majority of the 20-plus fish I caught that day on one 1/16-ounce black marabou jig. I kept using it until it was frayed, the black paint was gone and after I had finally snagged it on a log and mangled the hook beyond reasonable repair.
To be fully accurate I should note that Scott also switched up baits a couple of times and caught fish on other flies as well, but the technique pretty much remained the same.
When I finally did wear out that jig and I took up Scott on his offer to use one of his TFTCEs the casting got easier the working the current got easier and the feel was improved. That tungsten bead head sinks faster than a rock. It made a real difference.
Fishing is like anything else. You can get the job done with any gear you have, but anything customized for the job you’re doing is going to make it that much easier.
The way Scott described his fishing tactics while he fished goes beyond the simple mechanics of the cast and where to put it. Listen to him talk and you know he’s thinking about what that streamer looks like and what he is trying to mimic with each cast while considering what fish that might be waiting for meal—presented in any number of ways.
It’s acting “like a minnow” or “an insect trying to fight the current or escape from another predator.” It might look like a crawdad or a wounded baitfish or a nymph fighting its way to the surface.
Cast-to-cast you’ll seem him switch things up. A high-stick drift is not a “dead drift” but works the streamer downstream, bouncing near the bottom across the current in a way that might mimic that insect, crawdad or wounded baitfish. Stripping it across the current might look more like a lively minnow.
Sometimes the retrieve is quick, other times he’s adds pauses to let the fly drop and rise, drop and rise. He remembers what works, and then repeats it.
He pointed out that the key is presenting that fly in a spot where a fish might want to sit and wait for a meal to come its way or ambush a passer-by. More often than not he will cast to a seam between fast and slow current, the edge of an eddy or behind some structure.
He talked about the feel of the current and if his fly was touching the bottom. He commented on hit-and-miss strikes, something felt only if your line has the right tension. He constantly watches his line and how the current makes the streamer move.
He hunts, and he relies on the habits of the fish.
“Fish are notorious tasters,” he said. “They like to taste things. They strike out of instinct. Whatever might look like something they’ll try, they might even eat a stick now and then because it looked like something. They put it in their mouths and spit it back out faster than you can believe... I like the action of looking for that fish to come up and hit that thing out of instinct or quickly looking for a dinner.”
All you have to do is insert yourself into the habits of that sought-after fish of the day.
