Small Stream Fishing

They Hold Their Secrets Well

Tony Entwistle looks at the joys and secrets of New Zealand small stream fishing and discovers that, while presentation is everything, “one of the attractions of small streams is that the angler often has to exercise considerable imagination to get the fly into or over many of the trout, or lies, they encounter”.


“The instructive nature of the small stream is not forced upon its visitor, but held candidly by the water and the trees. The angler must make an effort to hear the stream’s messages and see her beauty … and spend enough time near her to understand her languages, her modes of speech…” -- James Prosek, Early Love and Brook Trout.

The trout floated slowly back into a position below us. Hidden by the foliage of the overhanging branch, we watched as it rose to suck an insect off the surface of the small stream. Within the security of its enclave among the circle of willows, the trout hovered, balanced on the current, suspended mid-flow, weightless, solitary, and free. We were close enough to see every spot, every perfect detail. Being this close to something so beautiful and wild elicited base instincts of capture and ownership that were almost overpowering for a youngster. I had to have that fish. My father had to catch it.

Dad lowered the fly down through the hole in the branches underneath us (literally ‘below’), and proceeded to dap it on the current, working the rod tip to manoeuvre it into the path of the trout. My helpful advice wasn’t always well received. It would never occur to a small boy that his father might be just as absorbed in the excitement of the ‘hunt’ as he was. Fly and trout coincided and the fish tipped on its tail and rose to the surface, hanging under our crude offering forever. The fish’s eyes seemed to stare directly into mine and I was sure it must see us in our leafy hideout. Then a miracle happened, one that has lost none of its fascination over the ensuing 40 something years. The trout’s mouth opened, briefly flashed white, and the fly disappeared.

Dad set the hook and our lives changed forever. Where before there had been a surreal quiet, punctuated only by the anticipation of two pounding hearts, the world turned instantly into a tumult of excited yells and a spray of water, mud and leaves. The trout hung below us thrashing wet and wild, suspended now in the air above the creek. For an instant I looked straight down into its gullet and saw the gills flash red before the fish crashed back into the water and was gone. Even a modest little 2lb trout wasn’t going to be lifted straight up into a tree.

As we clambered down from our vantage point in the old-man willow, only a puff of mud, where the trout had buried itself in the watercress, and a circle of willow leaves quickly dispersing on the surface of the stream bore any testimony to the action that had just unfolded. We had lost our only fly, ‘handcrafted’ such as it was from our pet bantam hen, and we had lost the fish. But two new trout fishermen were well and truly hooked.

That small South Canterbury stream, which we simply called ‘The Creek’, flowed only a few hundred metres behind our house and became a private playground for a budding angler. I spent countless hours before and after school perched in its willows or knee deep in the mud along its edges, relentlessly pursuing the plentiful small brown trout that inhabited the glides between its cress beds and willows. A two pounder, as it turned out, was a big one. But for a boy, they were all acceptable.

It was the days before catch-and-release, but ‘The Creek’ seemed to handle the predations of a schoolboy easily, maintaining its abundance of well-conditioned little brown trout for the duration of my school days. Every boy should have a creek. As Steven Meyers suggests in The Nature of Fly-Fishing: “It is faintly sad to contemplate a childhood lived without one …”

A couple of years after I left home a contractor flushed his spray gear into ‘The Creek’ and decimated the trout population. I can remember how gutted I was when Dad gave me the news of the disaster. Sometime after that, the giant willows that watched over the little creek’s secrets were all removed and the stream was deepened and channelised. Although that creek still exists, it has changed and I haven’t looked for a trout there in 30 years.

It is only now that my Dad has gone that it occurs to me just how lucky a boy and his father can be, to actively pursue and develop newfound skills together. Our early trout fishing forays were all on the many small streams close to our home in Geraldine. Dad very quickly became a skilled dry fly angler and he took me along and encouraged my efforts as often as possible. As my own passion and skill grew, we were privileged to spend some great times together. Especially magic were the wonderful southern evenings when trout hidden through the day left the security of the cress beds or willows and rose freely in the extended twilight to a hatch of mayfly or brown beetles.

Anglers are comfortable on small streams. Maybe this is due to the closer contact with the quarry or the degree of predictability these fisheries afford the angler who fishes them regularly and learns their nuances. They are seldom intimidating and often tend to provide opportunities on less than perfect days, when larger rivers are affected by bad light, strong winds, or raised water levels. Small streams have an intimacy and romance not possible on their larger brothers. And as any angler who regularly fishes them also knows, there will be some special moments of magic, because they hold their secrets well.

For anglers used to fishing the open spaces afforded by larger rivers, there are adjustments to be made if they are to make a successful transition to fishing smaller streams.

Small stream trout are more likely to be resident within a more confined area than their cousins in bigger rivers and seem more aware of their surroundings. The greater proximity of predator and prey is at once both an inspiration for and a handicap to the angler and, while many small stream trout may themselves be diminutive, there will also be bigger ones that the hurried or careless angler might never see.

Success in fishing any water always comes down to how well an angler applies the three fundamentals of observation, tactics, and skill. However, it is probably fair to say that it also requires a little more ‘intellectual input’ from the angler, if they are to develop the general ‘local knowledge’ needed to be consistently successful on small streams.

Notwithstanding the principle that the simplest approach to any fishing situation is often best, once on a small stream anglers are frequently quite limited in the way that they can approach the water and its fish, particularly where there is any significant amount of streamside vegetation. Anglers are generally faced with having to follow the same route as previous fishermen and this becomes a significant problem to solve on streams that are regularly or heavily fished. The warning signs will be obvious, evident in the beaten path through the grass, or the clear trail through the algae at crossing points in the tailout of some pools.

Any resident trout are going to know exactly where to expect trouble to come from and will adapt their behaviour to watch the danger spots. And so the observant angler, when faced with a consistent number of spooky trout that flee at the first instant, looks for any options that might provide some opportunity to vary the ‘normal’ approach to the water. This may be as simple as making use of any available cover, or even changing sides of the stream and finding a way through the shrubbery to seek an alternative casting position. But the successful small stream angler also needs to cultivate the twin skills of patience and stealth to a higher level than is frequently needed on bigger waters. Being closer to the trout simply means that they both see and hear better a clumsy angler’s approach.

While a student at university, I had a holiday job on a South Island high country sheep station as a trout fishing instructor at a camp for youngsters. There was a modest spring creek on the property that held a reasonable head of brown and rainbow trout, which included some very good fish up to 8lb. It never ceased to amaze me that, despite hardly ever being fished to, these fish were almost unapproachable during the daytime. In the days preceding the camp, we could nonchalantly ride along the banks of the spring creek on a horse, spotting and learning the lies of the resident fish. They would do little more than drift out into the centre of the stream until the horse passed by, before resuming their feeding stations. However, when we slid up on our bellies several days later with a band of young hopefuls, the same fish would bolt as we barely poked our noses out of the tussocks. Over time we eventually began to adapt to the small stream’s demands and, by refining our stalking skills and exercising increased care in our approach to its waters, we were able to enjoy some success on those daytime trout. However, as we learned the locations of many of the toughest trout, experience also taught us that the very best time to catch them was in the evening, if the wind died, because then they dropped their guard and tolerated our approaches more politely.

Common starting points, such as anglers' access signs, while a great help in readily identifying bonafide stream access, are also sometimes a hidden trap. Like trout, anglers are so often creatures of habit. It is my observation that, when setting out to fish an identifiable beat, anglers will assemble at the starting point at roughly the same time in the morning as everyone else who has fished the beat before them. They subsequently all pull off the water at a similar place and time somewhere upstream. It largely follows that in the intervening hours, as the anglers progress up-river, they all tend to hit the same pools and fish at roughly the same time of day. Not only do the trout learn from what direction trouble comes, they also learn roughly when it is about to arrive!

One of my favourite small stream locations is now quite heavily fished during the prime summer months. Twenty years ago I rarely encountered any sign of other anglers there and simply fished it as I found it. The beat requires about six to seven hours to effectively fish it, if the resident trout are out and about. But if they are not, an impatient angler can get over the water in three hours or less. These days, as it is some drive from Nelson, I am not often the first angler to the spot and with another car parked at the access point I have to search for a morning’s fishing elsewhere. On many occasions I have taken to checking that same spot in the early afternoon and found no anglers to be seen. Subsequent sorties have found good numbers of trout active and visible in feeding positions, many of which are eminently catchable.
On those occasions that I have been lucky enough to be first up on the water, it is quite noticeable to me that I need to exercise a much greater degree of patience and stealth during the morning fishing, if I am to be successful. Frequently with no trout visible, I have simply had to sit for up to an hour and watch and wait until the first trout slide surreptitiously out from their willow lairs and start to feed. Often within five minutes of the first trout showing, four or five others will have also taken up feeding positions. As time goes on, these trout, initially unsettled and wary, slip into a consistent feeding pattern and become more approachable, as if an expected period of danger has passed.

While demands on distance casting skills are rare, small stream trout place a high premium on accuracy and delicacy of presentation. Presentation is everything and one of the attractions of small streams is that the angler often has to exercise considerable imagination to get the fly into or over many of the trout, or lies, they encounter. Learning to sidecast on both sides of the body becomes a priority, as does a tolerance for losing flies to the appetite of the offending overhanging foliage. The principles of dead drift and evading drag are no less important than in any other situation, but may be much harder to judge due to the subtleties of gentler flows and the angler’s proximity to the trout. There have been many refusals of the fly in small streams erroneously attributed to the wrong fly pattern, which were a product of drag subtle enough to be missed by the angler.

Anglers new to small stream fishing are also going to have to look at creating a specialist small stream flybox. As a rule, fly patterns, both nymph and dry, will be much smaller than used on larger streams. My greatest all-round small stream dry fly is undoubtedly the Parachute Adams in sizes #14 to #20 and its appeal is almost universal. For a nymph pattern, variations on the ubiquitous Pheasant Tail are also seldom without peer, with my personal favourite being a copper beadheaded variation with a full length mylar flashback, in sizes #14 to #18. As an angler’s experience on small streams grows, he will inevitably draw success from an increasingly expanded set of flies, evolved to meet increasingly more exacting levels of imitation and presentation. Included will be such diverse elements as tiny bloodworms, CDC emergers and even terrestrials, such as ants, beetles, and cicadas.

Because of the quieter flow characteristics of many small streams and the smaller flies commonly used, finer and more delicate tippets than are used on big rivers (down to 5X and 6X) are often required. The advent of modern high strength tippet materials has been a boon for anglers searching for that elusive combination of fine diameter, tensile strength, and durability. A plethora of options are now available, but the angler needs to be aware that the compromise between fineness and strength needs some regular upkeep by way of constantly checking leaders and vigilantly retying knots, especially at the fly.

While a six weight outfit is adequate, in truly testing situations and for more consistent success, the regular small stream angler will enjoy the benefits of using lighter tackle, such as a #5, #4 or even a #3 weight outfit. A good small stream rod should not be long -- 8ft 6in is plenty (almost too long) -- and there is a benefit, when it comes to playing fish on fine tippets in confined spaces, in having a rod that loads progressively and isn’t too stiff. Most modern lightweight flyrods have stacks of bottom-end power that enables better management of good-sized trout when playing them, but still facilitates enough sensitivity in the tip to cast the delicate lines needed for good presentation. Until recently, tackle stores in New Zealand have not been very good at catering for rod weights under #5 and missed an opportunity for years to help small stream anglers better enjoy their sport. Pleasingly, this trend is now changing with the production of lightweight rods by local rod manufacturers that are both good quality and affordable for most anglers. My personal favourite light line rod is a petite 7ft 6in three weight, loaded with a four weight line to help short distance casting accuracy. The combination of finer tippets, shorter lighter rods, and short casts also lends itself to using shorter length leaders -- sometimes only 8ft and seldom any longer than 10ft -- which helps to maintain the accuracy needed for consistent success.

Prime lies for the biggest fish in a small stream are almost invariably near to cover, close by the deepest water, most commonly afforded by such things as overhanging trees or foliage, undercut grassy banks, log jams, or cress beds. It is a fact of life on many small streams, that the angler is usually confronted with more obstacles and less room to hookup and play fish, and that there will be plenty of opportunities for a strong trout to tangle the line and dislodge the fly. When playing a fish, there is often not much opportunity for the high rod technique so effective on big waters and instead the angler has to adapt and get the rod tip down low very quickly, using sidestrain to play and subdue the trout. I have found that, when a trout gets in under some tight cover, the best way to effectively play it out again is to keep the rod tip low and let the fish fight the full curve of the rod. The secret is to ensure that the direction of pull is along the same angle that the trout entered the cover. The taut line then generally prevents the fish from rapping around any further obstructions, and the combination of a tight line and the full curve of the rod acts like a giant rubber band and simply ‘springs’ the trout back out of trouble. It certainly requires quick thinking on the part of the angler to recognise what the trout is doing and the rest comes down to the quality of the leader, the knot, and a healthy dose of good old luck.

Small trout from small streams are not by necessity synonymous and one small stream I know holds its secrets very well. For much of its lower length it ploughs its way through a rugged, narrow gorge flanked by beech forest, with little trout holding water and fewer trout, before levelling out in a small area of flats with a series of half a dozen small pools. On occasional visits over the years I have discovered that only one of those pools will ever hold a trout and usually just the one (just once we saw three fish), but that one trout will almost certainly be over 8lb. Three of those trout, all different fish, have even topped the magical 10lb mark and that, unashamedly, remains a powerful incentive to make an annual visit to that small stream and its magic pool… just in case.

Perhaps Nick Lyons best summarises for me the value of fishing small streams when he writes: “There are practical reasons for fishing small creeks. In early season, when major rivers often bear the greatest pressure -- and may even be unfishable because of heavy runoff -- these tiny feeders may be rich lodes. Sometimes you’ll find big river fish, which have escaped the turbulent flow; sometimes you’ll find flyfishing water when the main river will only bear rougher trade; almost always you’ll find a touch of wildness you thought was lost, nearer than you imagined.”

Steve Raymond, writing in Trout Bum, is more succinct: “I can only say that catching average trout from average streams may be a lousy job, but someone has to do it.”

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