Big Browns....Help!!!

[stanbery]

There is nothing better than a BIG brown on a streamer. I have not broken that magical 24" mark yet

Same here. My biggest to date is 22" I have hooked into a few on very large leech patters this years but they all cut my line.

I use a 30 foot 250 grain shooting head most of the time for browns and I have used a full sink as well, but the place I normally go for big browns at 300+cf the shooting head works the best.

Jon

[flybob]

Bob, are we talking little baby browns?

Benny these are the baby browns I am talking about.



Yup, learned me from Bernard's "hunting for browns in you backyard" school!

[Benny]

DISCLAIMER: My personal best brown is only 15" so I'm no pro, but I've caught lots of larger fish using these techinques and witnessed others actually catching big browns using the same.

I'm in the same boat Rockstar. I have gone to places where big browns should be, only to find that they're not there or the ones there are on the smallish side.

I have caught some big fish, but they were of the wrong flavor so to speak, rainbow flavor and not the brownies I'm looking for during the fall.

As far as lake fishing, I do think it's more of a luck factor when you hook a big fish. Most of my lake fishing is blind casting anywhere on the lake. If there's any structure around I'll try and target those areas, but for the most part anyone can catch a fish stripping streamers in a lake, not much skill needed there.

Catching big browns in rivers on the other hand takes skill and if you do not have that skill you don't catch big browns plain and simple. That's one of the reasons you don't see to many people posting big browns from streams/rivers IMO. Time and time again you see the same guys who have the browns wired, will consistenly catch the big browns. That is not luck, that is skill and time on the water, those guys definitely did there homework and know how to entice the big boys.

Bob, that's a nice size for the local stuff, but I'm sort of looking for the fish in the 20"+ range

[coreyk]

Corey, you talking 'bout that Pom-Pom? That thing had one big butt cone head on it!

I just ordered Kelly's video this weekend. The fishing one. I figure to get the tying video next month.

Yeah... Going to send him a pom-pom and one other (ugly as *) fly I had good luck with all spring. I really liked the Galloup video .. Very informative.

EDIT: Oh yeah and check these out also...
http://www.itinerantangler.com/podcasts ... _s_21.html
http://www.askaboutflyfishing.com/speak ... /kelly.cfm

[briansII]

Benny. If you don't already have the Galloup DVD, I can lend you a copy I have. Just PM me your snail mail.

briansII

[Benny]

Benny. If you don't already have the Galloup DVD, I can lend you a copy I have. Just PM me your snail mail.

briansII

Thanks, I'll PM you my address....cool

[darrin terry]

Hey Cor? What do you think about doing a little how with recipe for the Pom-Pom? In the fly tying section. I'd be interested in checking it out. That thing is sick hangin' from that browns mouth! Pretty cool how that fish was almost as brightly colored as the fly.

Also, is it an articulated fly or single hook? It looked single, but with all the fluff and flash?

[anacrime]

yeah they're hard down there, but it's all relative. 20"ish browns are small to them

[Benny]

yeah they're hard down there, but it's all relative. 20"ish browns are small to them

Have you seen KIWI CAMO Trout Bum Diaries Volume 2..? Nice browns on that DVD Helps give you an idea of what it might be like in your near future

[coreyk]

Hey Cor? What do you think about doing a little how with recipe for the Pom-Pom? In the fly tying section. I'd be interested in checking it out. That thing is sick hangin' from that browns mouth! Pretty cool how that fish was almost as brightly colored as the fly.

Also, is it an articulated fly or single hook? It looked single, but with all the fluff and flash?

Sure ... I'll try and get something together in the next while. It is a large single with lots of flash!

[Bernard]

What a fun discussion. I wish I could hook browns as easily as you cats roped me into the discussion! My mouth is bleeding.

The Kelly Galloup school has many many merits and I even called him personally a while back to order flies and get suggestions. Two years later I finally took a fish on one of his flies; a 16" rainbow on a woolhead rainbow pattern of his that is about 5 inches long! Oh well ...

Ok seriously, that said, I have been fishing a version of the Circus Peanut long before I knew of the Circus Peanut and also use a non-articulated version. This landed me a brown a year ago of about 27+ inches on a west slope river here in California. As browns are want to be, this incident was rife with irony. Let me explain. Earlier that day, thinking of previous brown encounters I crept up upon a deep frog water eddy and deliberately slammed an articulated slump-buster on the surface and the water exploded. The fish was easily 2 feet long and immediately sped downstream. River was pushing 700+ cfs. The fight didn't last long. I would have straightened the hook or broken the line ( 2x ) if I stood my ground and swimming to free the line from a submerged boulder was like flying a kite in a tornado and I was the kite. I tried three times with a mask that I keep handy. The current was too strong. Not joking. This was very consistent with Kelly's assessment of hog browns sometimes being VERY shallow and attacking on the surface. The rush is worth a million bucks and is more like a LMB attack.

More irony: So later that day I fished and hiked and fished and hiked and stumbled upon a plunge full of big bows. This became fun and consoled me from my loss which still was eating at me. As dusk kicked-in, a huge shadow chased one of my bows but darted back to the dim depths. Trembling, I switched rigs, and lobbed a streamer on a sinking line and a "Ridiculous" which is like a single section version of the C. peanut. Third swing got the take and the brown. That's still my best brown story as well as my personal best. Here's the money shot: http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x163/BernardYin/Pure%20Fishing/attheendoftherainbow.jpg.

Obviously, I also believe that bringing the fly to them is helpful and if they are deep, there are loads of time when they will STAY deep. I do a lot of tactless jigging with heavy flies into holes and crevices.

I continue to hunt them and have lost count of the number of times a good brown has taken a bow from me. Intercepting migratory fish is fun and I recently racked up a 30+ fish day with none under 15" yet none were over 19" either. Not that I am complaining This of course depends on watershed and timing.

These fish are fickle and hard to predict. The soft rules like dawn and dusk (or nighttime) are very helpful and YES YES YES knowing where they are likeliest to be is very helpful. Seasonal factors and flows also help determine how holding water will behave. I watch stream gauges like a hawk. THAT is a whole other discussion and really helps with hunting bows as well.



My most recent trip had me on a hole where almost zero rainbows were to be found and this was far from more accessible areas. I and my buddy are convinced that the hole is/was dominated by a beast or two because it was too sexy to have so few fish. Once this paid off for me in the local So Cal mountains where I noticed the deadness of a spot and gambled on a cast to the deepest darkest corner and lo and behold I got a nice brown.

Jeez how many tricks are there? Here's a great one: Cast from far away! I'll cast over 20 feet of meadow and boulder to drop a fly over the edge of a spot and look for the rings/wake from a take. Damaged fly line or spooked trophy? You take your pick! The recent Field and Stream ( gasp! ) has a funny one where they suggest drifting a streamer into an undercut on a leaf! In other words, don't spook your quarry! I have also learned tons from friends and I have a few with whom we constantly exchange emails, texts and such. We're idiots and poisoned by browns.

In the end, the biggest ingredient is persistence. They are pretty fish and diabolically attractive. I love wild bows especially if of size and strengthened by fast water but browns are hard to not obsess over.

Whew!


B

[coreyk]

Great post! Some good tactics to think about that will help me to up my game. Man .. Now I'm really itching to get out and throw some streamers! That 27" brown is beautiful fish!

So, when watching flows what exactly are you looking for as an indicator that it would be a good time to go after a trophy brown?

[rayfound]

Well, i've recently learned that the river directly across from my elementary school as a kid is actually a Trophy Brown fishery, and I've never, ever, wet a line there. This place was literally less than a 1 minute walk from my classrooms.

http://www.grandrivertroutfitters.com/gallery/pagegallery.htm

Man, I really wish [now] that catchable fish hadn't existed only in lakes in my mind as a kid... oh the experience I would have by now.

[Nav]

I was fishing with Stanbery and a couple guys in a lake one day and he was catching fish fairly consistently, I asked him what he was using he advised he had a streamer on. I switched to a streamer and a short time later landed my first Brown on a fly, as I returned to the hole I had been hogging all morning Stanbery tied on somehing that looked like a small cat and started straining it through this honey hole his fly leaving a wake like something that had been launched from a submarine, all fish were soon either beat to death by this monster or seen running upsteam for there lives as the machine methodocily searched them out. Jon diffently was employing the " go big or go home" tactic that day

later
nav

[anacrime]

soooo bernard wanna go to new zealand? i got a room with your name on it