Every August there’s a week when the river gets down to a trickle and half the anglers in the state declare the season over. The fish are still in there. They’re just in a bad mood and living in a third of the water they had in June.
Low water is a puzzle with a known solution. It took me most of a decade to stop fishing summer rivers the way I fish spring rivers, and the summers I finally started catching fish again are the ones I’m writing down here.
Watch the thermometer before anything else
This is the rule that governs everything else. Trout get lethargic above about 68 degrees and start dying above 77. If the water is 70 degrees at noon, the fish aren’t refusing your fly out of spite. They’re sitting still in whatever oxygen they can find and waiting for evening.
I keep a cheap stream thermometer clipped to my vest and I take a reading when I get to the water, then again around 11. If it’s pushing 70, I change plans entirely: fish the first two hours of light, quit, and come back at dusk. If a cold rain comes through and drops the water five degrees, drop what you’re doing and go, because that’s the best fishing of the month.
Brook trout are the most sensitive to this. They need the coldest water in the system. Browns hang on in warmer stretches longer, and a stocked brown in a slow pool will still eat in 72-degree water when every brook trout within a mile has moved to the headwater. Water temperature is the whole story in August. Read it first.
Fish the hours nobody wants
Dawn and last light. That’s the schedule, and there’s no way around it.
Trout feed at night in hot weather and slide back into cover as the sun comes up. So the fish that ate well at 2 a.m. is still in a hunting mood at 5:30 when the light is gray and the water temperature is at its daily low. I’ve had August mornings on the Ellis where I hooked four fish before 7:30 and exactly one after. The pool fished the same both times. The fish were done.
Last light works too, especially for browns, which move shallow at dusk. The downside is mosquitoes, and I have not found a chemical that fully solves that. I’ve just accepted that the last hour of a summer day costs me some blood.
Midday in August is for scouting, napping, or taking your kids swimming. Give up on it and you’ll fish better.
Go small, then go smaller
Low, clear water means spooky fish and no color in the water to hide a big fly. Everything I fish in August is a size or two down from June. Dry flies go to 18s and 20s: little Adams, elk hair caddis, and a whole lot of terrestrials. Ants and beetles along grassy banks are the most reliable summer dry-fly fishing in New England and almost nobody bothers. A size 16 black foam ant, dropped three feet above where a shadow meets the current, catches fish all August.
Nymphs get small too, and weighted, because the fish are deep. A size 18 pheasant tail with a couple of split shot two feet up the line, drifted along the bottom of a plunge pool, is about as good as it gets in a drought. Tippet goes to 6X. On a sunny afternoon in gin-clear water, I’ve gone to 7X and caught fish I would have spooked with anything heavier.
Find the cold water and everything else follows
In a drought the trout concentrate wherever the water stays cold and oxygenated. Four places, in order of how often they’ve saved me:
Spring holes and spring brooks. Where groundwater comes into the river you’ll find a seam of cold water, and the fish pile into it. Look for the milky green tint and the weeds that stay bright green all summer.
Deep plunge pools with shade. The classic. Deep enough that the bottom is out of direct sun, with a riffle dumping oxygen in at the head. Fish the head of the pool at dawn and the tailout at dusk.
Beaver ponds and their outlets. Ugly water, excellent fishing. Brook trout stack below a beaver dam in August because the overflow is the coldest, most oxygenated water for a mile.
Headwater brooks. The smallest water you can find. A mountain brook that’s ten feet wide in June might be an ankle-deep trickle in August, and it’ll hold eight-inch brook trout in pools the size of a bathtub. I’ve spent whole August afternoons with a three-weight on a brook I’d be embarrassed to name, catching wild brookies one after another, and it’s better than blanking on a famous river.
What I got wrong
For years I fished through the middle of the day in August out of stubbornness. The plan was always the same: get to the river at ten, fish hard until four, drive home annoyed. I burned entire seasons that way. The fix was setting the alarm for 4:30 and being honest about when the fish actually eat. A better fly and a better river had nothing to do with it.
The other mistake was skipping the thermometer and guessing. I can’t feel the difference between 64 and 70 degrees with my hand. The fish can. Fifteen dollars for a thermometer saved more skunked days than any rod I’ve bought.
August isn’t a dead month. It’s a narrow one. Fish the cold hours, the cold water, and the small bugs, and it’s honestly some of the most satisfying fishing of the year, mostly because you have the river to yourself.