How to Understand What Trout Eat

Hi! I am Tim Landwehr from Tight Lines Fly Fishing Co., and I am your host today on Midwest Sportsman. Today we are down in the Spring Creeks of Southwest Wisconsin, very, very diverse fisheries as far as -- an amazing trout fishery is what I am getting at I suppose. But what I want to talk about today is kind of, what do these fish eat, what do these fish eat all season long, from January, all through the summer, where do they live, and how do we find them? The rivers are very, very rich in insect life, and what I would like to do today is kind of show you all the different insects that live in the river. Maybe compare some of the flies that I have in my box when I am down here, and what I am using to actually fish for these fish, and give you a better understanding of how to find them. We are going to break down throughout this episode riffle, run, and pool, which is the basic fundamentals of where fish live, and I want to show you that today. Here we are in the river, and what we are standing in right here is really kind of a conveyor belt or a buffet line for the trout. This is referred to as a riffle, and we will talk more about that in a little bit. But it's a lot of broken water. This is where a lot of insects are living in the river system are going to get washed downstream and will become prey for trout. But let's just kind of take a look here at some of the rocks and what lives actually in the river itself. If I just grab a rock here, here we go, if I grab a rock here, look at some of the stuff that I am finding. This particular fly right here, this insect is a stonefly, and a stonefly lives in a highly oxygenated water, much like what we are standing in here. Gets to be a pretty good size, like you see here. And depending on which particular stonefly it is, may have a life cycle from one-year to four-years for some of the giant stoneflies. But that is a big chunk of meat for a trout, this is a T-Bone for a trout. In our Spring Creeks we do have stoneflies. It's not the prevalent food organism in our rivers though. But almost every rock that you overturn, you are going to find stuff like this on it. There is another thing that I do have in my hand as well, that we are going to talk a little bit more in depth about, but it's a fly that's called a caddis larva. It's a free living caddis larva, and I will try to open them up a little so you guys can get a little better look at them. There he is, free living caddis larva, or a green rock worm, or something like this. These are scattered all over the river bottom, and right now this is a very, very important food organism for the trout. A little later we are going to show you actually tying one and maybe fishing one of these. But what is in this river system; I will put him back, what's in this river system is a buffet line, and the Spring Creeks are so special because they are packed full of nutrients and packed full of bugs that these fish are going to eat. Now what I am going to do is, you guys have seen me turnover some rocks, getting idea of some of the bugs. What I want to do for you is, I am going to collect a mayfly nymph, a caddisfly nymph, and maybe a stonefly nymph, and we are going to do a little comparison with the flies that I might carry on the river. What would I use to fish, after I have come down to the river, rolled a couple of rocks, where would I start, what would I use, and I am going to show you some different flies and compare those. Now, here are the different insects that, just from rolling a couple of rocks, that are important, especially on the Spring Creeks to a trout fisherman. If we take a look; I showed you earlier, the little caddis larva, which we have here. We have what's called a mayfly nymph. This mayfly nymph in particular is the blue-winged olive, which is incredibly, incredibly important on our Spring Creeks. And also, if you notice, there are two blue-winged olives, the same size, but if you notice, this one is a little bit darker. Right now we are at the time of the year when these insects are hatching, and this darker one is ready to come out of its nymph shuck and turn into an adult mayfly. I mean, this fly is going to hatch this afternoon. So these, we have got caddis, we have got some mayflies; not all mayflies are going to look like this. You can see here is a little bigger crawling variety of a mayfly. We have a stonefly, and we have a scud, that fresh water shrimp, and we also have something that's incredibly important, is the midge. This is a midge larvae. And midge larva, they are very, very small, but they are in these rivers by the millions. So trout make their living a lot of times off of small insects like these. Now, these are all subsurface insects that all have an adult life cycle, other than this little scud. So all of these will live in our river systems for at least a year, and will swim to the surface or migrate to the shore and hatch and become the winged adult, and a lot of times that's what's referred to as a hatch, and we can catch a trout on those. But there are so many different insects that live in the river, and this is an enjoyable part for me as an angler, kind of figuring out exactly what's in our rivers. Now, you don't have to be an entomologist to say, well, these are baetis, and exactly what insects are what, their Latin names. But what you do have to know as an angler regardless of what your experience level on these rivers is, you need to be able to match their silhouette, their size, and their color. You don't have to know exactly what they are, what species they are. But if we take a look; I am going to grab a couple of different flies from my own boxes, and we will just kind of match them up. This little caddis larva right here, I would use a fly that would be called a caddis larva. Go figure. Can you see how closely that represents its adult? That stonefly, I could use something just kind of reminiscent of that stonefly, maybe a prince nymph like this would work well for that. The scud; let me grab one of those guys, the scud is another important insect, and like I said, the thing about the scud is, these fish make their living off of scuds. There is an awful lot of them down here. So if we take a look there, there is a good representation. Can you see what I mean about the size and the silhouette? Color is number three, size and silhouette are the most important. And then that little midge, this is the one that shocks most people, how can a fish see that? But I mean, we have caught 20 inch browns out of these rivers, fishing little flies like that, but there is the original, there is the imitation. And then these little blue-winged olive nymphs that you see here, just a little baetis nymph, a little blue-winged olive nymph to kind of represent that. But the most important thing is that you are matching its size, you are matching its silhouette, and you are matching its color afterwards. But the rivers are full of these. You can see how close we can represent these with artificial flies, and this is what is referred to as matching the hatch. Now, there is an opposite end of that, there are some different attractor flies that are important, and there is one in particular that's very, very common in this area, courtesy of John Bethke, he created a fly called the pink squirrel. The pink squirrel looks absolutely nothing like anything on this little box, but for some reason, time in and time out in the early season, that fly catches fish. This is what we would refer to as an attractor fly. It doesn't necessarily represent an exact replica of anything in the river, but it looks foodie, I guess. You and I can simply look at, if we are curious about something, I can walkover, I can pick it up and examine it, and say, that's interesting, and set it back down. A trout doesn't have hands, he can't do that. So the only way he can analyze something is physically picking it up with his mouth, and sometimes attractor patterns like this are very, very effective. So this is a good place to start as far as flies go on the Spring Creeks. I wouldn't be without the flies that you see on this little plate. So let's head back to the river. We are going to kind of take a look at how the river is constructed, where these bugs are going to live, and where are those trout going to live, and how do we fish it.