Night Fishing For Trout

More than 50 years ago when I became serious about trout-fishing, I heard stories about fishermen who caught big trout at night during the midsummer. I decided I was going to try it.

Before I became a die-hard fly-fisherman, I tried various baits in my efforts to capture trout. Dad knew the local night-fishermen used commercially grown crickets. I found an advertisement for them in a magazine, and I ordered 1,000. I was still in college and living at home during the summer. When the crickets arrived, I placed them in a large cage Dad had used when he'd once tried cricket fishing. He didn't warn me about what was going to occur.

Before the end of the first week of my night-fishing adventures, the crickets had all escaped from the cage. My mother was not delighted, as the crickets chirped constantly from various locations in and near our house. Before I returned to college that fall, she warned me, "You'll not do this again while you're living here."

After I'd moved out of the house, gotten married, and had become a dedicated fly-fisherman, I read the late James Bashline's fly-fishing book "Night Fishing for Trout," which stirred my interest in night fly-fishing for trout with wet flies. Earlier, "Pike" DiBartolome had told me about three nice runs to night fish. For a number of summers, I wet-fly fished these places after dark and landed some fine trout. It was spooky, especially when I heard splashing in the water from unseen "beasts" or heard distant rifle shots.

A gradual series of things began to keep me off the stream after dark. One was that my son was growing up, and I got suckered into helping coach Little League baseball and later Pony League for several summers.

Another was that one of the nice runs was wiped out after an old wooden bridge was replaced by a new one that destroyed the run and a deep cutbank where the trout hid during the day.

An encounter with a couple of "night riders" who mentioned something threatening was the prime reason I lost my enthusiasm.

Last summer I experienced a renewed interest and ventured forth twice after dark. I discovered that one remaining run had silted in and no longer held trout. The other, on the BFO River, had changed and was unsafe for a 70-year-old to try wading during the day let alone after dark.

However, if I could erase 35 years from my slate of 71, I would give night-fishing for trout another shot.