We are expecting a heat wave this week with temperatures reaching to 99 ºF, so I took advantage of this perfect spring day to fish the Assabet in Concord, MA. Last time I fished this spot, another fly fisherman recommended I pick up the roll cast to help in rivers with more foliage. So my primary goal for this tip was to learn and practice the roll cast, otherwise I was there to enjoy a nice day out of the city. In preparation, I watched some YouTube tutorials, the best of which I’ve linked at the bottom of this post.
I took the 7:45 AM commuter rail out of North Station, arriving in West Concord, around 8:15 AM. I biked over to the Acton boat launch, locked up my bike, and rigged by fly rod. To help me track the line, I started with a #16 elk hair caddis.
There were a couple of cars parked at the boat launch, but I only saw one other angler. I made sure to give her plenty of room and located a good area along the bank where I could practice. It took some time to get the mechanics down and understand how the line behaved, but I think I was able to make good progress. Eventually I was able to reliably make an effective cast, extending the line and presenting the fly at the end, though I still need to work on the timing of the motion to lay the line down more gently.
After an hour or so of practice, I moved to another area that looked a bit more “fishy” and tried my luck. Watching my #18 parachute adams (I lost my #16 elk hair caddis on an overly-exuberant back cast earlier) float along the current was exciting in itself; the potential that it represented, thinking that any moment, a fish could rise to snatch it. I targeted different locations in the water, through the riffles, on the shade/sun boundary, in the eddies. On one of these attempts, I saw a silver flash and then my parachute adams was gone! I set the hook and reeled in a small fall fish1. It wasn’t the trout I was after, but this was my first fish caught on a fly, and it was reassurance that my efforts were paying off, that I was progressing. This little fall fish was encouragement.
I headed back around 10:45 AM to catch the 11:11 AM train back to town. But first, I celebrated with a toffee heath cookie from Nashoba Brook Bakery.
Note that the fall fish imaged above was not the one I caught this weekend, but instead one I caught on my spin rod last fall (aptly) – you can see the yellow-with-red-dots Panther Martin dangling from the lower jaw. I forgot to capture a photo for this post, and this fish was caught in the same river, so I figured it would be a good stand-in. ↩︎