Feeding and Holding Cover:
Obviously feeding cover is the best place to catch fish, simply because they are feeding. While I am no expert at reading water, I simply know the basics. Feeding cover is usually just riffles or deep fast water coming out of a bunch of rocks. Other places to look for feeding cover is behind solitary rocks. These rocks create pools, and also calm water (not necessarily good for the fish). The fish hang out on the outside of the "V's" these rocks make. When they are hanging out in these places they are usually eating nymphs. You can see this if you can see the fish. They might be rolling, darting from side to side, or just going up and down. Fishing for these fish can be quite difficult since sometimes you get cross currents that drag your line and your fly other than where you want it to go. This is where mending comes in handy. In a really deep pool, if you're not at least having your fly come up w/ a little bit of grass, you need to go deeper. Sometimes this requires at least 4-7 split shot to make the fly get down quickly in such deep and fast water. Other times in relatively shallow water, you wont need any split shot.
The Holding cover usually is a deep dark pool around 4-6 feet deep. If you can see the fish, they will probably be on the bottom of the pool and just hanging out. You can catch fish this way, but its difficult. It may take many changes of flies to get the fish to bite just exactly what they want. Sometimes they don't bite at all. The times the fish are going to be in the holding cover is around 10am to about 4pm. At this time, look for fish in the deep pools staying cool.
Calm Water; Dry Flies:
If you can see the fish taking dry flies off the surface, then today is your lucky day! If you can see repeated rises, then you know that that fish is taking dries off the top. Usually the best place to spot fish rising is in calm water, cause they can see the fly better and you can see them better. Although, sometimes you may not see fish in the calm spots, they may be near shore and cruising for bugs that fall off the vegetation. If you see this, then usually the fish will be kind of pointed up and swimming back and forth. You will see them go up and down getting the stuff off the surface. Most of the time you have to match the fly exactly to, or similar, to what the fish is taking. Although, the fish that are looking for bugs will eat a variety of stuff, just what looks good to them, IE: beetles, grasshoppers, ants, flies, lots of stuff. When I went on the South Platte on Saturday, that was the exception, there had been flooding because of the Hayman Fire and the water was pretty murky. I had to throw dries that were big and white, I almost caught a nice fish on an elk hair caddis that Eric tied. If you see fish like this, you should try to sneak up on them from the rear so that they don�t see you because they always face upstream.
Jeff Goncalves
Trout fishing editor Fly Fish the West
