The 3 BEST Places to Trout Fish This Winter! (Fly Fishing)

Winter can be the most difficult time of the year to catch trout. With the cold weather, frozen guides, and often times snowy conditions the fish can be lethargic and just generally hard to catch. Having said that In this video I’m going to discuss 3 of the best places for you to trout fish this winter and a few ways you can help increase your catch rate during the coldest time of the year.

The first place you should fish during the winter are tailwaters. Tailwaters are great in the winter for several reasons, the first being that the water discharged below dams, at least if they’re bottom release dams, have a much more consistent temperature. In the winter water temps don’t fluctuate nearly as much as other freestone rivers do which means the fish have forage much more consistently available and therefore they feed more often. You’ll also find that in areas where it gets cold enough for the creeks and rivers to freeze that tailwaters are usually one of the few areas where ice doesn’t form. This footage is from a fishing trip I took to Tennessee, but tailwaters are found all over the country.

Another bonus to tailwater fishing is that typically there is some sort of spawn going on in the tailwaters in the winter. Which means that usually there are some larger sized fish pushing up those types of rivers to spawn from November through feburary. So as long as you can avoid the redds, either via floating in a drift boat or being very careful while wading, you can find some large fish that are naturally more concentrated below the dams in the winter. Make sure you check your regulations though, because many of the major tailwaters will have portions of the rivers that are shut down this time of year. But that doesn’t change the fact that the fish is incredible in the areas that are still open. The catches you’re watching now are from a tailwater in Colorado.

Let’s switch gears away from tailwaters and focus on the fish themselves. What I mean by that is migratory fish. If you happen to live near, or can travel to, an area where fish push out of lakes or the ocean to spawn in the winter then that’s a guaranteed place to catch fish. A perfect example of this, at least for an easterner, is a spot like Lake Erie. Lake Erie has a robust population of steelhead, or for the sticklers from the Northwest, lake run rainbow trout, that push up the creeks in the area all winter to spawn. This same phenomenon takes place in the rest of the Great Lakes as well, with fish from lake trout to king salmon all running up the tributaries. But it’s not just the great lakes, the native steelhead in the NW can be fun if it’s legal to target them, as well as even some ocean run native brook trout in the northeaster US. This type of fishing is not only some of the most fun fishing you can have, but it’s the only time of year a lot of these fish run, meaning it’s also the BEST time to fish for them. The footage you’re watching is from Erie PA chasing steelhead from Lake Erie.

Alright let’s talk about the third place you should concentrate your time in the winter and that is around spring creeks. Spring creeks are similar to tailwaters in that the water temperatures stay consistent throughout the winter unlike other freestone streams due to the spring influenced. Springs usually discharge from the ground, which keeps a consistent temperature regardless of what the air temperature is. The best thing about spring creeks is although there are a ton of very famous springs creeks throughout the eastern and western US, there are some awesome lowkey spring creeks that can allow you to get away from the crowds. The footage in this video is from a spring creek in West Virginia.

Similar to the tailwaters, often times due to the constant nature of the water temps the fish in the spring creeks may spawn in the winter. i’ve personally seen this with rainbow trout more than brown trout, but it depends on where your’e fishing. Another few things to keep in mind when winter fishing is to fish low and slow, the trout often times don’t concentrate in the same areas they do in warmer times of the year. So nymphing is king this time of year, with streamer fishing being a close second if you’re in an area with good brown trout populations. But if you’re streamer fishing use weighted line or weighted streamers and work the fly much slower than you might in the spring or summer. Winter fishing can be fun, and if you’re willing to find these types of water you can have some incredible fishing. It’s also the best time of the year to avoid crowds and get an entire river or creek to yourself.

If you enjoyed this video let me know!! I can definitely make a few more.

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