Just One Question PHOTO GALLERY
It never ceases to amaze me how you see those fisherman in the same spot on the river time after time. I seldom fish the same spot in the river for various different reasons, one of which is that fish are always moving up and down a river system. I scratch my head in confusion as to why I see the same fisherman in the same spot constantly. As water temperatures rise and fall and their food source grows or depletes, fish will come and go as the conditions dictate. One day I will fish a hole or run and there will be many trout caught. Go back to the same spot a week later and there will be no trout caught?
What influences this migration of fish in and out of different locations of a river system? Cover plays a very important role in this pattern. Available food supply has a big impact as well. Stream fish seek to find cover the second they hatch. These tiny fry are very small and are weak swimmers and unless they can find some type of cover to hide behind, they often get swept away by the current.
Take note here, Fish need larger pieces of cover to shade them and to conceal them as they grow. The biggest fish in a river/stream seek out the largest boulders and logs or the deepest undercut banks. Water that lacks this type of structure will usually only hold small fish! The best cover not only breaks up current, it also provides overhead protection. As a result, fish prefer slack water beneath an undercut bank to an eddy behind a boulder.
Every stream or river has several pieces of cover that I refer to as fish magnets. More often then not, these spots are inhabited by one or two of the rivers largest, most dominant fish. When you are able to catch one of these fish, another of about the same size moves in to replace it. The most consistently successful anglers on a river are those fishermen who know where several of these spots are located. This brings us back to the question I proposed earlier.
Here are some spots in a river I look for when fishing for trout. With some practice and patience you will learn to recognize these subtle visual clues that reveal their locations. Points or sharp bends of a river create major eddies. The longer the point or the sharper the bend, the larger the eddy that will form as a result. Another place to look is bridge pilings, they have eddies on the upstream and downstream ends. Quite often the cover is better than it looks because of the riprap piled at the base of the pilings to reduce erosion. And last but not least, weedbeds create a diverse current pattern and hold many types of food. Fish lie in the slow water in the beds themselves then they dart out to grab food drifting through channels between the beds. Look for these spots on any river system and you will have the upper hand on those fishermen that stand in the same spot over and over.
