The back end of the season, roughly from the middle of September until the reservoirs close, has a character all of its own. The fish are the best they will be all year, the crowds have gone, and there is a slight urgency about it because you know the window is closing. Some of my best days have come in the last fortnight.
What the fish are like
Two things change. First, any stocked fish that have been in the water since spring are properly acclimatised. They are hard, well-conditioned and they fight like wild fish rather than like recent stockies.
Second, the fish are feeding hard. Cooler water, plenty of food available in the form of fry and late hatches, and an instinct to put on condition. That combination makes them aggressive.
What you lose is consistency. Back end fishing can be brilliant or completely dead depending on the day, more so than in midsummer.
Depth changes through the day
Autumn water is turning over. The thermocline that stratified the lake through summer breaks down and the whole water column becomes more uniform in temperature. The practical effect is that the fish are no longer pinned to one depth band.
What that means for you is that you should start by searching depths rather than assuming. I will often start with an intermediate line and count down, changing the count until something happens, before committing to a floating or a sinking line for the session.
On cold, bright, still days the fish tend to be deeper. On mild, overcast, breezy days they are far more likely to be up in the top few feet.
Wind lanes and the windward bank
Autumn winds concentrate food, and trout follow it. The scummy line where two wind currents meet on the surface collects terrestrials and dead insects and is worth fishing hard.
As a general rule, fish the bank the wind is blowing onto. It is less comfortable and it is where the food ends up. The one exception is a bitter northerly, which tends to push fish off the windward bank rather than onto it.
Flies for the back end
Three groups cover most of it.
Fry patterns, because on many waters the fry feeding is in full swing. Covered properly in its own right, but if you see fry activity, fish it.
Terrestrials, particularly daddies and, on the right day, hawthorn or beetle patterns. Anything the wind can blow onto the water.
Lures and boobies for searching, particularly early and late in the day and in coloured or cold water. The back end is not the time to be precious about fishing a lure. A black and green tadpole or a cat’s whisker fished on an intermediate has saved plenty of my late season days.
Pace of retrieve
Cooling water usually means slowing down, and that is true up to a point. Long slow pulls and figure of eight retrieves work well as the temperature drops.
But the back end also throws up days where an aggressive fast strip triggers takes from fish that will not touch a slow fly. If slow is not producing after an hour, try the opposite rather than persisting. Autumn trout react to a change more than they react to patience.
Make the most of a short day
The light goes early and many fisheries shorten their hours at the end of the season. That compresses everything.
My approach is to skip the very early start, which is often the coldest and least productive part of an autumn day, and to fish from mid-morning through to the last legal minute. The final hour is frequently the best of the day, particularly if the sun drops behind the bank and the light softens.
Ask before you go
Fisheries at the back end vary hugely in condition. Some are fishing brilliantly, some have not stocked for weeks and are worn out. A phone call gets you a straight answer and saves a wasted day. Ask specifically whether the fry feeding has started and whether they are still stocking.
Sarah Marsh came to fly fishing through her father, who kept a rod on a small syndicate water in Devon. She spent her teens fishing stocked reservoirs and gradually worked her way toward wild fish on moving water – first on rain-fed freestone rivers in Wales, then on the Hampshire chalk streams she now considers home water.
She holds a level 2 APGAI fly casting qualification and guides informally on the River Test and, from June to September, on a private beat on the River Tay for Atlantic salmon. Her personal best brown trout came from the Itchen at 4lb 1oz; she’d sooner not talk about the salmon that came off at the net last August.
At The River Bend, Sarah writes the game fish species guides, fly fishing technique articles, and the legal content covering trout and salmon regulations.
Covers: Brown trout, rainbow trout, sea trout, Atlantic salmon, fly fishing, chalk streams, Scottish rivers, close season and regulation articles