Brookville Brown trout

Taking time out from my grueling vacation schedule of constant fishing, followed by more fishing, I decided to go fishing. The destination was east fork of the Whitewater River that runs through the town of Brookville, below the large reservoir of the same name. The goal was to check off another item on our outdoor life achievement list by catching a trout on a dry fly.

As most anglers know, aside from Lake Michigan and a scattered few places in northeastern Indiana, you are more likely to find zebras grazing the prairie than trout fishing in Indiana. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources does stock the tailwaters of several large reservoirs throughout the state but these small hatchery trout quickly fall prey to meat fisherman using worms and bobbers. Those few trout that survive soon die as water temperatures rise with summer heat.

White river at Brookville Town Park

However, due to a great deal of cooperation between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the DNR and Trout Unlimited, the last two miles of east fork below the reservoir is an actual, real-live, no-kiddin’ trout stream populated with decent numbers of rainbow and brook trout. There, as evening fell and trout rises dimpled the water around me, I stood spellbound in the cold and clear stream.

As a vastly inexperienced stream trout fisherman, I thought back to all the articles and books I had read on the subject and began unlimbering my rod. Seeing that the fish were sipping microscopic gnats off the water, I selected the tiniest of my just-purchased dry flies and tied it to a hair-thin 4X leader. Searching for a nearby riseform, I slung the line toward the feeding trout.

Cold water + warm air equals summer fog

There is a concept in fly-fishing known as “cracking the whip.”  You perform this maneuver by snapping your arm forward too violently during the back cast, causing a tiny whip cracking noise that also results in a $2 fly being separated in mid-flight from the delicate tippet.

Tying on a new fly, I chastised myself to remember that I wasn’t casting relative huge and heavy sinking flies at smallmouth bass but using tiny bits of hair and wire attached to line that will break if you have bad thoughts. Nothing happened on the next drift so I attempted another cast to the same fish. My effort was rewarded with a petite “crack!” that sounded reminiscent of two dollars being thrown out the window. I tied on yet another fly.

At sundown, four well-outfitted fishermen barged into my pool and I was hugely intimidated. However, while talking with these experts, I realized they were doing the same things, good and bad, that I had been doing but they did it with more confidence. Fighting my way up dark bank at 9 p.m., I vowed to attack the stream in the morning with renewed confidence and a softer forward cast.

I drove to nearby Mounds State Recreational Area where I pitched my hammock, ate a military MRE and passed out from exhaustion. Sleeping like the proverbial log, I awoke late the next day at 5:30 a.m.

Back at the river, it appeared mysterious, shrouded in a heavy morning fog where cold trout water met the warm humid air of Indiana. In the distance a feeding fish splashed as I entered the pool of honor.

My casting was better now and a few fish even slapped at the fly though there were no serious takers. After several minutes, I realized that the fish were still feeding on tiny insects that made my size 18 fly look like a struggling cargo ship as it passed overhead.

Pulling out my clippers, I attacked the fly viciously, cutting and pruning until it was half its former self. The fly looked like nothing but a tiny dust ball but I nonetheless cast upstream to the same fish. Mending the line, I watched expectantly as the fly line reached the area where the trout was stationed.

I reacted instantly at the swirl, expecting another miss. Instead, there was shock and surprise when both the trout and I realized that we were connected.

After a short but furious battle, I eased the eight-inch fish into my hand. The tiny brown trout wasn’t a huge challenge on my 5/6 weight rod but I didn’t care. Using nothing but inexpensive equipment, correspondence school tactics and the walnut-sized brain of an outdoor writer, I had fooled a brown trout, considered one of the greater challenges in all of dry fly fishing. I was on top of the world and knew that the first fish, now swimming somewhere back in the stream, meant that I had passed the initial test and join a new fraternity, the association of “real” trout fisherman.

Of course as a pledgie I had to endure hazing, hence the minuscule two-dollar “craack!” behind me on the next cast.

East Fork Whitewater river trout fishing

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