Targeting Bigger Trout

I decided well ahead of time that the next time that I fished the Nanatahla River I was going to try to catch big fish. I have fished the Nantahala River plenty of times but I had never really made a targeted effort at catching quality trout. So this time I was ready to fish some fast water in deep runs and use big baits. Here is how it worked out.

 

I caught this beautiful rainbow trout in a deep run with a lot of current running through it. The conditions where perfect that day to catch a big trout: cloudy skies, cold temps, and a little bit of snow! I caught this fish on a XCalibur Twitch Bait with a Daiichi fat gap worm hook on it.







 

 

I caught this fish the next morning. It came from a deep run under a bridge and was also caught on the Twitch Bait.

 

 

I had this trout hit me on day one and even hooked it for a moment but was not able to land it. But I came back to the same run a day later and was able to get it to eat a Road Runner Marabou Pro 2.0.

 

I only had six bites over the course of two days of fishing. But for me catching three big rainbows like this makes it totally worth not catching big numbers of fish. Something else of note is that I spotted each of these fish before casting to them by looking for big fish in big fish areas.