By Brown Hobson

NC Small Stream Trout Caught on a Squirmy Worm

The worm fly has led a strained existence.  On one side of the spectrum exist dry fly purists won’t fish it and look down their noses at it.  In the middle ground are anglers who will fish whatever flies imitate food the trout are currently feeding on at the time.  And on the far side are fly anglers who have had great days fishing worms and can’t seem to start the day without one.  I reside somewhere in the middle.  The reason I fly fish for trout is primarily to solve the puzzle of what are the fish taking now.  If trout are eating worms I will tie one on.  If they are eating eggs I will fish one of those on too, but that is a different story.  I fly fish primarily in the South East for trout and we have lots of rain.  When rain falls the ground becomes saturated and worms crawl to the surface because the soil pores no longer have enough oxygen to sustain them.  Once the worms emerge the unlucky victims close to water are carried away into the stream flow and trout now have a crazy protein rich food source to gorge on.  I have always caught fish on worms during or after rains, but I had never seen a trout eat a natural for obvious reasons (my vision isn’t good enough to see worms under water).  This September I was fly fishing Flat Creek in Wyoming with my father in law.  It is usually dry fly heaven.  The weather was cold and rainy so we couldn’t fish dry flies.  We decided to fish streamers since our dries wouldn’t float.  My last trout of the day was  beautiful 18” cutthroat.  As I was removing my streamer from his mouth he vomited enough worms to fill an 8 ounce cup.  Point proved.  This guy had eaten an entire days worth of food in a few hours. I am really surprised he still wanted to eat my streamer.

Rain is not the only time to fish the worm.  It is the only time trout are seeing worms in the water column, but this summer on the Watauga River we had two months of super low clear water and little to no insect life.  If there is nothing in the water for trout to eat during periods of high metabolic activity I have found they eat random big flies because they are hungry.  This summer on a clear hot day when I saw no bug or fish activity I tied on a squirmy worm out of desperation and my modest expectations were shattered.  Trout both wild and stocked commenced to chew through my worm collection with a vigor.  For a month and a half I experienced a fantastic worm bite.  I believe this happened because trout hadn’t seen them since the spring and in the absence of food they ate my flies with insane optimism.

Any of us whose fly fishing journey have known since our pond days that fish eat worms. I believe you should fish whatever way you want.  I have no agenda, but to help people catch fish.   If you want to fish dries exclusively, no problem.  More fish will eat the worm for me.  If you are interested in fishing any item on the trout’s list of food items, then throw some worms in your box.  They will get eaten!