Overhead Cover for Trout

It was a very unusual opening day. Kris (my wife) and I canoed from Osgood to Williamson Crossing, maybe a mile or so as the crow flies. We began at the opening hour and took our time to thoroughly cover the water. By the time we were at the take-out point several hours later, we had nothing but a cranky hellbender hit our lures.

We asked everyone we saw how they’d done. Practically no one had a fish of any kind. It was the poorest opening day for trout I’d ever seen. The water wasn’t exceptionally high or discolored, but a cold snap had dipped the thermometer quite a few degrees and everything was in a deep-freeze mode. That is the only thing I could figure that would cause the opening day action to be so dismal.

It seemed obvious that the Little Shenango River just wasn’t going to give much results this day. So, Kris and I changed tactics. We went to a small feeder stream to try there. I figured that being smaller, it might warm up quicker in the afternoon sun. This creek wasn’t stocked and common consensus was that there was not natural spawning. Past experience had shown me that many stocked trout from the main river would find and swim up this feeder.

The feeder was about ten feet wide on average. It alternated between gravel and mud bottom, while its serpentine path flowed from one snag or log to the next.

Kris and I started at a larger than normal pool. It was only three feet deep at the deepest and was shaped like a large shallow basin. The deepest area was along the bank on our side.The only cover in this pool was a sapling clump that had a lot of branches draped over and into the water just upstream from the deepest part of the pool.

Kris and I ended up taking five nice trout from under that one canopy of saplings. That was from just one small pool. Talk about turning the day around!

I know another small stream in a watershed 20 miles south of the Little Shenango. It is even a smaller creek and has some of the most beautiful brown trout you’d ever want. This stream is a channel that wiggles down a skunk cabbage and alder swamp. The water is surprisingly clear and even the channel is often only two feet wide and maybe a foot deep. It is a very difficult stream to fish because access is almost 100% through brush that is unkind to someone pulling a fishing rod. As a result, I fish it only on occasion. Yet, the fish are beautiful and there is absolutely no competition. I’ve never seen another fisherman on it.

I’ve never seen a trout in its clear waters. Probably because the water is so small, the trout are always hidden under alder branches trailing in the water. The only way to catch them is to ease a bait or fly into the water upstream of the alder cover and work it downstream—until the strike. Of course, a snag in the branches is as frequent as a hit. That’s part of the challenge.

A good-sized stream I fished hard one mid-summer found me working the grapevines overhanging riffle areas. These weren’t vineyards of cover. The two main grapevine hotspots each covered a surface area of about 1 × 2 feet. Each was nestled up against a shallow bank. The water underneath was about six inches deep with moderate flow. The grape leaves were actually on the water.

You couldn’t float a dry fly because of the leaves. I found a #14 black ant (wet pattern) floated down under the leaves of these small pockets of cover worked well. I took seven brook trout that summer from just one of these grapevine hides. I don’t remember the number of fish taken from the other grapevine locations.

The common factor in these three trout locations is the overhead cover. Size of water and time of year matters little. Trout always have been and always will be attracted to locations that give them overhead protection.
In the first example where Kris and I took the five trout from one pool, someone had the smarts to cut down that overhanging brush a few weeks later. We never saw another trout in that particular pool. There was simply no cover left.

I’ve talked about overhead brush, alders and grapevines. I love this type of cover for trout. A lot of other types should be sought out as well.

Practically any log, snag or boulder in the water offers excellent overhead cover for the fish. If it adjoins a deep hole or deep undercut bank that’s added attraction—and undercut banks are themselves overhead cover. Many structure types will back up a floating debris pile.

Floating debris piles can be a combination of fallen leaves (in the autumn), plant parts, smaller sticks and bark pieces, water foam and other such things. These can form a solid mat upstream of the main structure. Large mats can be virtual condominiums hosting a number of trout.

Overhead cover isn’t limited to surface cover. An 8” diameter log a foot deep in two feet of water can have a trout lying under it. Likewise a boulder or large rock will obviously be on the bottom. The natural curve of most boulders and rocks will have a small recess next to their bottom affording overhead cover. Surprisingly large trout will tuck in and lie next to such a rock.

I was fishing Fisherman’s Paradise once. Standing and fishing in the same spot for 15 minutes, I was suddenly focused on a small protrusion next to a rock. The rock was only three feet from me in the water. The protrusion was a bit of trout tail sticking out from the far side of the rock. The trout was approximately 17” long—and the rock provided just enough overhead cover to be called home by a dandy trout.

When trout fishing, seek out the holding locations. One of the key holding locations is overhead cover. With thick overhead cover, the trout can be in relatively shallow water. In deeper water, a rock with a decent bulge several inches above the bottom can meet the need. Approach all overhead cover carefully and fish them well. The results will be well worth it with bonus fish. •