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Early Running Browns

Walter Wiese

Mature brown trout run to spawning areas each fall. And you can catch these fall-run browns weeks earlier than most anglers think—sometimes months earlier. I told my clients this as we walked down a steep hill toward some of the better water on Nameless River in Wyoming (you didn’t think I’d give up one of my best autumn fishing spots, did you?), and I could tell they were a little suspicious. In fact, I could hear them muttering: “It’s Labor Day weekend. We’re miles upstream of Big Famous River, where the browns that spawn in this river come from. Hell, we’re even upstream of where we’ve caught big browns in this river before, in late October. This guide is trying to put one over on us.”

Part of the cause of their thinking was that the trip had started as an Oh Crap day. One example of an Oh Crap day is when Big Famous River produces a single nine-inch brown on a Prince Nymph in three hours when you expected the river to produce big fish on dry flies. One must nip Oh Crap days in the bud and go elsewhere. So on the day in question, we bailed out and drove to a less-famous stream that most people know to hold eight-inch fish. Fun, but not the sort of place a guide takes experienced clients without a good reason.

The reason? This river gets its first push of fall-run browns (henceforth called “runners”) sometime in August, or two months before they spawn and a month before most people think to target them.

Early runners are never as numerous as their cousins later in the fall, and catching them requires different tactics than it will in October. However, it’s worth the effort, because you’ll have the opportunity to catch large trout; and targeting browns just as they start their spawning runs does not carry the ethical concerns that targeting them later in the fall does. (Many anglers choose not to pursue fish on spawning beds.) Not only are early runners usually found in deep water (rather than exposed in shallow water defending their redds); they’re not even sexually mature yet. In these respects, they are the trout analogues to early season bass, as they are working their way toward the shallow water where they’ll build their redds, but are nowhere near spawning form.

Wiese's Four Feather (Photo by Ted Fauceglia)

Hook: Dai-Riki 060 or other nymph hook sizes 10 to 18

Bead: Gold

Thread: 6/0 to 8/0 brown

Tail: Lemon wood duck

Abdomen: Natural ostrich herl

Rib: Small or medium gold or copper wire

Wingcase: Pheasant tail over gold, root beer or copper Krystal Flash

Thorax: Peacock herl

Legs: Pheasant tail and Krystal Flash

Early Runner Rivers
There are three primary factors that suggest a river will start getting early runners. First is good water quality in late summer and early fall. The best rivers are colder and more highly oxygenated than the waters into which they feed. When runners have higher-quality water to run into than the stuff they spend most of their lives in, they have a reason to start migrating early.

Next factor: No matter how good the water quality is, browns won’t run early if they don’t have good cover in the spawning streams. While the low light and gray skies of October and November give browns security, late August and early September feature brighter skies and higher temperatures. Rivers that lack cover and shelter simply won’t get much of a run until late in the season.