A Feeling of Fall in the Air and Trout on the Line

Larry Coburn fights a brook trout on fly rod in a sun-dappled stretch of Big Hunting Creek near Thurmont, where fish were plentiful. (By Angus Phillips For The Washington Post)
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Whatever. Bailey's a keen angler and knows what to do even with unfamiliar tackle. It wasn't long before he was tussling with a fat, 12-inch brookie, his first Maryland trout on a fly.

The truth is, while it felt like fall the brook trout and occasional wild browns in Big Hunting generally remained in their summer feeding patterns. A few pushed boldly out into open feeding lanes to chase hatching insects as the sun got higher but most stayed tucked in shady holes, waiting to dart out and grab a morsel as it floated by.

In times like that it helps to have someone who knows where the productive holes are. Coburn proved uncanny as we worked upstream, stopping at every deep-water spot. "Okay," he'd say, "drift a fly past that ledge next to the big boulder. There's got to be 12 or 15 trout stuck back under there."

Sure enough, the first drag-free drift you managed, when the fake inchworm or egg pattern swept along like wild food on the rushing current, out shot the dark head of a hungry trout. Often they were gone again before you could set the hook, but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while and we took our share.

Time flies when you fly-fish on a pretty day. Suddenly it was noon, stomachs rumbling, and Coburn had a little surprise. "Let's get a sandwich and head over to Beaver Creek," he said. "A guy came in the store the other day [Bass Pro Shops in Hanover, where he runs the fly-fishing department] and told me the hatchery had just dumped a bunch of big rainbows in there. We could take one home for dinner."

Beaver Creek lies 20 minutes across the Catoctins near Hagerstown, just below the state's Albert Powell Fish Hatchery. When hatchery officials tire of feeding their big brood stock, they dump the lunkers in public water downstream, where anyone with a license and a trout stamp can fish and the limit is five trout a day.

Coburn's source was not making things up. A half-dozen two- to five-pounders lay scattered among the watercress patches of Maryland's top limestone trout stream just below the hatchery and it wasn't long before we had a couple up on the bank. Mine's going in the oven tonight, stuffed with bacon and onions, to be slow-baked to perfection.

All this and October nearly a month and a half away? It boggles the mind.

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FALL PHENOMENA--Anglers keen to jump the gun on the coming autumn season should be aware that smallmouth bass already are rising to the surface to feed mornings and evenings on the upper Potomac from Great Falls to Harpers Ferry and beyond. Meantime, bluefish and rockfish have begun fall surface-feeding frenzies on the Chesapeake, recently around Eastern Bay, the Bay Bridge and at mouth of the Magothy River, also at dawn and dusk.

And it's only eight days till bird hunting starts with the arrival of dove season on Labor Day, Sept. 1, in both Maryland and Virginia.