How to Catch Early Winter Trout

Images by Kubie Brown

After a long sunny season of leaving your rods, flies, and waders in your car—ready in case you come upon some juicy looking water—the idea of storing it all for the winter has a feeling of finality. As the first frosty days rear their icy heads, your fly fishing stuff goes into the garage or basement with a gentle pat and reassuring word that you’ll see it in the spring. However, you don’t have to experience such sorrow. There are still plenty of opportunities to catch trout, especially in the early winter.

Successful early winter trout fishing is a game of fine-tuning. It requires patient angling and meticulous planning for each excursion. It’s worth the extra trouble though, because when you have the wherewithal to brave the cold and the know-how to use the right gear and fish in the right places, early winter can offer some of the best trout fishing of the year.

Lighten Your Gear

The first and perhaps most important thing to do when going after early winter trout is lighten up. The heavy tippet, stiffer rods, and big gaudy presentations of summer must be exchanged for less obtrusive tackle. Early winter trout fishing is all about finesse—fishing small pockets of good water for lethargic, spooky, and picky trout. Appropriate gear is vital for delicate presentations and detecting subtle strikes.

Your standard 5-weight trout rod will work fine for nymphing and dry flies during the early winter. However, a 4-weight or even a 3-weight rod may be better suited to the job. These lighter rods will help you cast lighter gear with less splash. Streamer anglers should also drop down from a 7-weight to a 6-weight or a stiff 5-weight for the same reasons.

Downsize fly patterns, too. Where you would normally use a size 12 or 14 nymph like the Prince Nymph or the Pheasant Tail, or dry fly like the Adams for summer and fall fish, early winter trout will more likely eat the same patterns in a size 16, 18, or 20. Streamer anglers will still have the occasional strike on the big, bright articulated flies of fall but will probably have more luck with smaller, lighter patterns like the Black Ghost and the Doppelganger stripped and bounced slowly along the bottom.

Shrink your leader and tippet as well as your strike indicators for early winter success. In the low, clear water of early winter, using 5x and 6x fluorocarbon leaders will definitely get you more strikes. This goes double for streamer anglers who should change from the heavy 15 lb and 20 lb tippet they use on warmer days down to 10 lb or less for more subtle presentations. Strike indicators should likewise be more dainty. Swap out large, brightly colored bobbers for smaller indicators made of yarn and foam that don’t sound like a submarine depth charge when they hit the water.

Change Your Spots

Another component to early winter trout fishing is realizing that the trout have probably moved. Those lovely fast-moving riffles and deep, trough-like runs you hammered fish in during the summer will likely no longer produce. This is because cold water slows the trout’s metabolism, meaning they prefer slower water requiring less energy to hold and feed.

Early winter fishing spots can be easy enough to find as you simply have to seek out the warmest water. Look for creek mouths dumping into larger rivers, sunlit flats in the middle of the stream, underwater springs bubbling in sloughs, and even areas where industrial runoff enters the river. These places will all have warmer water and plenty of food for trout. You should also pay attention to all that sluggish frog-water you hiked right past in the spring and summer and those gross, muddy spots with dark bottoms that you avoided earlier in the season—these are now prime lies for early winter trout.

Look for sections of water in these areas with slow currents that form decent feeding lanes and give them a once-over before casting. In the low, clear water of winter, spotting trout is expected. Look for fish moving in and out of the current and those that are opening and closing their mouths. These fish are actively feeding and are the ones you should be working your flies around, rather than the immobile fish simply laying on the bottom trying to get warm. Remember to make your presentations move as slowly and delicately as possible so you’re offering the fish an easy meal.

Fish During Prime Time

As much as we all like to believe that the early bird gets the worm, getting out on the water before sunrise in the winter is almost pointless. Just like when you unenthusiastically get out of bed on a cold winter morning wanting nothing more than a hot cup of coffee, to wrap yourself in your Snuggie (I know you have one), and not talk to anybody, trout are slow to get going when it’s cold. So instead of rising at dawn and hitting the water as soon as you can, it’s often better to sleep in until late morning and then start fishing in the early afternoon.

During early winter, trout become more active as the water warms up in the late afternoon and early evening. There’s also an almost daily window when they all “turn on.” Usually within a period that lasts between 30 minutes and 2 hours, every trout in the river will feed heavily, often consuming all their required calories for the day during that small window. Hitting these prime feeding windows is vital to having a good day fishing in early winter. In most places, the turn-on occurs sometime between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., but there is no real way to predict it. Spend as much time on the water as possible from late morning to early evening and note the time whenever you catch a few trout. These windows often repeat.

Nipping At Your Nose

There are two kinds of fly anglers out there: those who fish in the summer and then spend the winter tying flies and watching trout porn on YouTube. And then there are the others—anglers who are dedicated and obsessive and willing to brave the snow, ice, and bitter cold for just a few more weeks of putting a bend in their rod. These anglers know that when Jack Frost first arrives, early winter trout fishing is just beginning to heat up. So bundle up and head out the door for a few more good days on the trout stream because, like some of us, you may not want to put away your fishing gear just yet.