Morning browns

[pete41]

granted Pa. isn't Montana ..lol
pressure does make a difference.

 

[Longbow]

Interesting and makes sense but I caught my two biggest browns this past year. One was caught around 2:00 and other around 3:00, both in summer. One on a small zebra midge and other on a large hopper. They were 21" and 23".

 

[Reeder]

I have always believed that big predatory browns feed primarily at night, all year long, and that we are just catching the beginning and end of that period. There are endless variables that can and do change that, such as pressure, weather, hatches, the opportunistic nature of trout, spawning, plain old luck, etc. If there was an equal amount of time spent night fishing as there was morning and evening fishing, I feel the night time big brown numbers would blow away the first hour and last hour combined.

 

[pete41]

I was a big brown chaser-used primarily streamers,fished mostly big rivers like the Yellowstone,Missouri---weather can be surprisingly warm in Montana when chinooks come in.
Since that's what I moved out there for,the fishing and fished when I could,the only times I didn't get to fish were late Nov. and December.
I learned from experience when to expect the "bite" to happen.Night or day it was almost always came when the water temp got closest to their ideal,be it an up [winter] or down summer.So as I said above,this time of year the big ones could be taken at high noon on shallow,lite colored gravel bars if you knew where to look.Also ,taken in deep spring holes of course.
I am referring to 4pd. or bigger[weighed]-didn't even count anything smaller-so as a result my 30yrs. only yielded 501 fish-not many per year but I was happy.
So I would say the reason big browns are considered morning feeders is because that's the time of year most people fish for them..spawning season morning was best because they would be in shallows then drop into holds during the day but off course I never fished for them then ,he says with a grin...-

 

[Hook_Jaw]

One of biggest variables with big brown trout feeding other then night is rain and the water rising and getting off color most off my biggest trout ever caught were on the stream rise after a hard thunderstorm with bigger streamer patterns.

 

[salmonoid]

Fly-Swatter wrote:
I love reading these threads. There is a ton of experience and knowledge here.

I'll dive in...

IMO, Pete is closest to the "truth": Chances for the biggest fish are when conditions are best. Unfortunately, that statement is less helpful that it seems because it’s too general. There are many important variables: fishing pressure, water temp, time of year, availability of food, water level, fish population density/competition, riparian cover/canopy, aquatic cover/structure, etc.

You would have to be obsessive to even try to account for all this!

Another problem is most/all of us do not keep clean (confounding variable-free) data. For example, salmonid's, who is clearly a scientific guy, showed a chart that’s really interesting until you ask what time of year each fish was caught. The changing length of day and the switch between standard and daylight savings time are pretty big confounding variables there.

My take, it’s cool to think about this stuff because it helps us be more “tactical” (ref. other thread), but the bottom line for me is to have fun! Part of the fun for me is thinking about this stuff, but there is a sharp drop off in fun when it becomes too much like work.

All datasets that are for a single angler are going to be skewed towards that angler's habits. The time of day they fish, the time of year they fish, the types of streams they fish, and the geographic location they fish will skew the data. So for the OP, who is off the stream by 2-3PM, a true statement may be that he never catches large browns in the afternoon. But the reason is not because large browns can't be caught in the afternoon but that the afternoon is not his primary fishing time.

I'm in IT by profession, but it's true I am a scientist by training and degree. To generate a meaningful chart of larger fish by time of year turned out to not be quite as simple to graph as the time of day chart was. I use an app to log all my catches. This data is stored in a SQLite database, and includes geolocation, date, time, species, weather data (if I have access to a cell signal, but my phone is usually in airplane mode while fishing, for numerous reasons), what I was using, length (either pre-defined ranges or an exact measurement if I take one), etc. This is then very easy to query using SQL or the data can be exported to CSV for analysis in Excel or other programs.

Because Excel stores the date as the number of days from January 1, 1900, trying to graph days in 2012-2015 generated a chart with really weird date labels. Even though I was only displaying MM-DD, the underlying data still included the year, so to get all fish caught in August to show up together, I needed to strip off the year. So I converted the original date to the day of the year (1-365), and since I can easier visualize that 8/1 is August 1 than it is day 213 of the year, I picked an arbitrary year to get back to MM-DD format. Now, all of the same months across the four years were together.

What does it say? First, I did very little fishing in the winter/early spring of 2014-2015 because it was so darn cold. With the exception of Spring, I also don't fish the creeks that have produced other larger fish at other times of the year during the winter time. There's probably more than a loose correlation between the amount of time I spend fishing and when I catch the larger fish (i.e. more time on the water in late spring, summer and early fall than winter, early spring and late fall).

I agree that angling is about having fun. I think looking at actual data and knowing the context it was generated in provides more insight into that fun. Plus, with reduced daylight hours and temperatures in the winter, analysis is something else to do that is fishing related.

One other path I went down at the end of last year was to answer for myself whether or not there were trends towards night fishing being more or less effective depending on the moon phase. For instance, there are anglers who claim that night fishing is best when there is no moon. I have caught a number of fish under a full moon, but that doesn't mean that fishing under a waxing or waning crescent moon might not be more effective.

The answer for me? Hard to tell. In order to analyze the data, I wrote a script that pulled in a number of variables (location, date, time, etc). I used a cutoff of sunset to define night fishing (although this technically pulls in a few fish that I caught at dusk while not "night fishing"). I took the GPS location of the catch and calculated sunset, adjusted for DST. If the time of the catch was after sunset, I then calculated the moon phase for that date.

Total: 78

New Moon: 10
Waxing Crescent: 9
First Quarter: 7
Waxing Gibbous: 3
Full Moon: 10
Waning Gibbous: 15
Last Quarter: 12
Waning Crescent: 12

A new moon rises in the morning and is already set before it is night time, but it rises later and sets later as the moon proceeds through it's cycle. And by the time you're into waning gibbous, it is usually rising after I'm already asleep for the night. So there may be a weak correlation to the visible light aspect, but maybe I had less opportunities to fish during the first quarter and waxing gibbous phases. The only way to validate the data is to generate more inclusive data by fishing more

Also agree that when the conditions are "right", you'll have a better chance of catching a larger fish. What the right conditions are can be variable. If you're on a small stream and you have a thunderstorm blow through that muddies the water, that will bring the bigger boys out to play. If you catch a stream following a longer term rain event, even if it isn't off-color but just flowing high, browns might be on the move. Browns are vulnerable at night, but it is not at all a lock that you'll catch a big fish just because you night fish. And underlying this all is that the stream you fish has to have big fish in it to begin with. Locating a large fish definitely increases you odds of catching a large fish. Being at the right place even when all the conditions are wrong is better than being at the wrong place when all the conditions are right.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

There are a few sections of the Letort that habor better populations of large Browns than the rest of the creek. It was my observation that in these sections you could see the large fish active and feeding in the mid channel before the sun comes over the horizon. There is a period of day that you can see but the sun is not able to be seen, it is during these times you can witness this event. Once the sun makes its crest these fish disappear into cress and structure and most do not come back out until nightfall. It was all very interesting to me. My theory is they do not know yet that night has ended and still feel safe to feed. It must be a certain amount of light that triggers them to hide. One would think that the same applies as to when the sun goes down but you can still see but I have never observed these fish to come back out during this period.

I always taken it that this is the best time to land a large brown from the Letort because the fish are feeding, comfortable and it is easier to hide from them in the low light. Still as all this seems favorable, I have yet to land a fish over 18" in this time frame. They are still spooky and difficult. My largest Letort brown of 26-27" came during the mid afternoon sun in a totally different section.
Go figure....

One recent weekend I had a choice between tossing my streamer to the cress bed on my side of creek or one on the opposite side. I choose wrong and had a monster come flying out in shallow water and bright sun from the opposite cress bed. This fish seemed determined to get my fly but stopped half way, seemed confused and then took of for never never land. I think he felt very exposed and it scared the fish.

However the general population (large and small) feed comfortably from daybreak for about 1 hour. I have had periods of catching a dozen fish and then nothing or next to nothing the rest of the day. It's very interesting, but Iam only speaking of one stream here.

Kevin I find your post fascinating. Thank you for putting it together.

 

[sarce]

As someone who is allergic to mornings I do what streamerguy does and try to take advantage of high water!

 

[JackM]

In case no one already mentioned it, but I thought this was about something else and was tempted to delete it or move it to the OT forum. My every morning brown has a whole 'nuther definition.

 

[geebee]

i think it depends on the method you fish.

streamers - around dawn and dusk, and after dark.

nymphs - mid day, overcast, rain.

dry flies & wets - afternoons and dusk til just after.

 

[Fly-Swatter]

Salmonid: Just....wow! That's a lot of info, time and effort. Very nice.

So, my take away is "fish more" (at least that's the part that stuck). ;>)

Seriously, though, I can think or two good reasons to go through this kind of collection and analysis:

1. When we have those days that leave us scratching our heads wondering why our killer techniques didn't work, we may be able to answer that question.
2. When we have limited time to fish, we may be able to pick our situations to increase the likelihood of success.

I think a lot more data is needed for these kinds of conclusions to be robust. Maybe, one person cannot collect enough data. In a perfect world, a bunch of anglers would pool their info so there would be a large enough sample size to make more definitive conclusions.

Would take some of the mystery (fun) out of it?

My fishing buddy and I have conversations that dabble in the kind of info you have here, but it may be skewed a little bit too much to the left hemisphere for me.