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The Rise

Our August 2001 contribution from Trout Bum

A few weeks back I was sitting by my favourite local river watching trout rising. I saw a fish that, judging by the rises, seemed bigger than the others. I had the impression that the rises were heavier. There were small mayflies rising so I tied on a CDC emerger in size 16 and fished over the spot a few times. On the fourth or fifth drift the fish came up to the fly and I managed to hook it. As it came surfing towards me on the surface I realised I had made a mistake. The fish weighed half a pound, if that. Later the same day I ignored the rises of a "small" fish that came steadily up towards me, rising every yard or so. When it slowly came swimming past me I saw it was a fish of some 20+ inches.

Rises can fool anyone. Sometimes it is impossible to decide the size of a trout from the rise, other times it is a direct give-away.

"A fish 'rising' on a local river. This is not a rise at all in its proper sense since it is a fish feeding on something in the weed near the bottom. The rise comes from the fish's tail as it stands on its head, feeding. From time to time it was possible to see the fin in the surface but I had to sneak up it to see what it did." Click image to enlarge

All this got me thinking and when, a couple of days later a friend and I were out fishing for sea trout in the salt I talked to him about it. We both had the same experiences and even though he fishes more than I do he still makes the same mistakes. That evening we had some good examples of the trout's ability to diversify their rises. Early on we had big trout hunting for fry, and there was no doubt about what they did or the size of them. Heavy swirls, big fins showing and long steady head and tail rises. When we got back to the harbour around midnight we saw some very subtle rises that could have been fry, I fished over them and managed to hook two trout that both seemed to be a good size. They both jumped off the hook and left me standing there. There was no way that you could have said by seeing the small swirls the fish made, that these were big fish, or even trout.

"Much more straightforward. This trout is taking emerging mayflies and drifting nymphs in the surface film. It held this position for a very long time, feeding steadily. The water here is some 10 to 15 feet deep but the fish hung suspended in the top two feet of water." Click image to enlarge

When you watch fish that you know the size of, it gives you an opportunity to see how much the rises differ. It all depends on what they take, where in the water the prey is, where they are positioned, the speed of the current and a lot of other factors. I have made mistakes on numerous occasions, small rises that turned out to be big fish and small fish making "big" rises. Fish feeding deep can fool you with "rises" that are nothing but the tail of a fish standing on its head. These can be dismissed as "small ones" and you will walk away from them, none the wiser. If they take tiny insects in slow parts of a river or on a stillwater, the surface can be virtually undisturbed, just the smallest of bulges. In a river in Sweden called Nissån, they stock rainbows on some stretches. At the end of the season the surviving fish are hard to catch and even harder to detect. I went there late last autumn with a friend who is an excellent flyfisher but not used to late autumn fishing. When I told him about fishing with size 20s and 22s he thought I was mad. The first rises we saw he did not believe was a big fish: small roach or bleak were his judgement. When he hooked a 3 1/2lb rainbow he couldn't believe his eyes. The only reason I got it right was that someone else had shown me these "tricky" rises.

"Both these fish were taking sedge and sedge pupae in fast water. The rises where splashy and heavy as they had little time to decide whether to take the insects or not. Fish, as these can be a blessing after struggling with "picky" fish in slow water. Most of the time they are easier to lure up to take a fly, even if the drift is not perfect." Click images to enlarge

After a while you think you have cracked the code, and you go out to show of your knowledge and make an absolute ass of yourself. Well that is what happens to me anyway. Every time I get a little bit wiser though, and if I live to be 250 years old I might even get most of it right. There are some things you can do to get better at judging rises. If you are lucky enough to fish waters that are clear, you can get far with a pair of binoculars and some good polarising sunglasses. Take your time to study the rises and try to judge the size and position of the fish by the rises and what insects you see. Then sneak up on them and try to see if you were right. On waters that are not so clear you have to apply "watch and catch" or at least "watch and try to catch". It is always worthwhile to try to take your time watching and judging the rises before going for the rod. It is not easy, I know, but it is worth the effort.

"This is a really big fish on an English chalkstream. It is impossible to say how big but I observed it for a long time and I suspect it went well beyond 10 lb. Unfortunately the river was strictly private. The fish was taking drifting nymphs with machine-like precision. I saw it first from a distance. It was not really rising but it was "moving" enough water to make bulges when it came close to the surface to pick up a struggling nymph." Click image to enlarge

Rises are one of the few things in fly fishing that I actually believe can be learnt from books. Not all about them, but enough to make you a better observer. There are people that have been down this road before, so why not take advantage of their experiences?

"You have to take my word for it, but there is a big trout, close to the bank on the other size. The fish is visible as a light narrow shadow to the left of the bit off grass that sticks up on the left. This fish made rises that looked like a really small fish. Sipping down small drifting mayflies it moved no water at all. If the water had not been clear I would never have fished for it, but I saw it clearly as it patrolled its small patch of a backwater. The fish was around 31 inches long. This picture was actually taken some days later when a friend of mine was trying to fool it again. It had wizened up!" Click image to enlarge

One of my household books when it comes to rises is Vincent Marinaro's eminent In The Ring of The Rise. Besides being a truly great book, and an inspiration to go fishing, it also has a very good chapter on some of the rises you can see trout doing. There are other books that do this as well. Brian Clarke and John Goddard make observations on the different rises in their classic The Trout and The Fly.

"Going back to its spot. This trout from the Derbyshire Wye has drifted in the slow water for some three or four yards, hanging motionless below a mayfly, before taking it with a small rise. It is now returning to its feeding station. Fish like this one can drive you crazy by inspecting and rejecting one fly after another. It is often hard to fish a drift of several yards without getting some drag, and if you do the fish just ignores the fly and goes back to its favourite spot." Click image to enlarge

There is also a short but informative chapter in Randall Kaufmann's very interesting and well-written book, Lake Fishing With A Fly. I am partial to Marinaro´s book, but that has a lot to do with the effect it had on my way to look at trout fishing. In his book, Marinaro says some things that are important when it comes to understanding rises. In the introduction: The Anatomy of the Rise, he describes it like this. "The riseform does not disclose to the fisherman the trout's observation or feeding station. It does not reveal the direction from which the rise came. It does not tell how far the trout has drifted with the insect before the rise occurred‘" And he keeps on listing what the rise does NOT show us! The book also has a very good chapter about rises with impressive pictures of rising fish, as I have said. Clarke and Goddard are also interesting in that aspect. As for Kaufmann, well the chapter about rises is not big but it is, as the whole book, well written and it is about stillwater fishing, an area where different rules apply altogether.

"These are a couple of my favourite pictures. I never saw, until I had processed the film, what this fish actually did. This is the big trout that I mention in the text. I saw it rising when I came walking up the river. The rises were calm and from the angle I saw them I thought it was a good-sized fish. There was something about the rises that made me curious so I sneaked around the fish and came up in a spot where I could take some pictures with a telephoto lens with a polarising filter. I saw the fish was really big and it was leisurely picking large mayflies, Danicas and Vulgatas, off the surface. It had no rush, just went for them, slow and methodical. When I saw the pictures for the first time I was amazed. The whole head of the fish is out the water before it turns back down." Click images to enlarge

There are many other books that take on the subject of rises and do it well and as I said before, rises are one of the aspects of fly fishing where I believe you can learn from a book. Just as a small appendix: I would like to say that I think Kaufmann's book should be on every curious stillwater fly-fisherman's bookshelf. But that is just my humble opinion. When I flyfish these days I prefer fishing clear waters. This applies to both river and stillwater, but when it comes to stillwater it is not as important. In stillwaters the fish are a bit "easier" to read, or not.

"Mad jumpers. Rainbows chasing damsels as they fly close to the surface in the harbour at Rutland. This was spectacular and I have seen it on other occasions, but here there were six or seven fish jumping like maniacs. One picture came out all right out of the 15 or so I took. I still haven't figured out a good imitation for a flying damsel though" Click image to enlarge

But as for rivers, I definitely prefer them when they are clear. The more I fish the more that becomes obvious, and one of the reasons why is that when I do, even I can sometimes tell how far the trout has drifted to the rise. Sure, as I mentioned before, you can "watch and try to catch". But for me to begin to understand rises, I need clear water. One of the ways I try to learn about how a fish rises is by taking pictures. I have managed to get a few together, not as many as I would like, they are like rods or reels, you can't get too many, but I have got a few. I want to show you some of the pictures I have taken of rising fish. They are taken whenever I got the chance.

Unfortunately, a lot of times the light is not good enough. Often when I photograph rising fish the result surprise me. Not only that the rises often are really quick and it is hard to focus. There has been occasions when I never really saw what happened and get a real surprise after the film has been developed. One of those rises was a big trout on an English chalkstream. The trout must have weighed some 8lb and from a distance the rises did not look all that spectacular. As I managed to sneak up on it I saw that they were. The fish is finishing off the slow rises with his whole head over the water! Well I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Who knows, we might meet crawling along some riverbank with camera, binoculars and flyrod. I wish you nice rises.

Trout Bum