Fallfish on the fly

I went blue lining today in search of brook trout in NY near the CT border. I didn’t find any brookies, but I did catch 14 fallfish.

Fallfish are a large native minnow species. All of the ones I caught were 6-10in long, but there were dozens of fingerling size in the stream, too.

Even though I wasn’t targeting them, fallfish are fun to catch. They take flies, even dry flies, and they fight hard like trout. They are a lot of fun on a tenkara rod.

See the little white bumps on the head of those one?

I looked it up when I got home, and that means it is a spawning male. The bumps are called nuptial tubercles. That makes sense, because a little while later I saw two fallfish redds (nests) downstream of this. Both were large mounds of pebbles, 1.5-2ft in diameter, with lots of small fish around them.

Fallfish males build the nest mounds out of pebbles, one stone at a time. Spawning is communal, although usually initiated by the nest builder, with a number of females and surrounding males using a single nest.

I did release everything I caught today, and I didn’t disturb the redds. Once I noticed them, I moved to a different pool.

Check out the video, it will be very clear where the redd is.

A few other neat things I noticed around the stream today:

Red Trillium:

Blue heron tracks:

Another set of tracks that I think are muskrat. Note the five toes, and short prints (front feet) aside long prints (hind feet).

All in all, a great day on the stream. I’m going to keep this stream in mind in a couple years when Charlie is ready to learn how to cast a fly rod. The fallfish are fun to catch and there is plenty of casting room here. One section had some good pools without trees nearby. Also a good place to practice reading the water and detecting strikes.