Trout Fishing During The New Moon, Just After A Cold Front

The cold front that I mentioned in the last post made it's way through my favorite trout fishing area,

and the temperatures warmed, the skies cleared, and I decided to hit the river again.  After all, in a month or two I'm going to be doing much less fishing for trout and more sinking deep into the depression that comes with the wintertime in Montana.  I mean sure, I'll go out and wet a line a time or two in the winter, but as you may or may not be aware, trout become much more difficult to catch when the temperatures are consistently below the 20 degree mark, which is what we have to look forward to here in Northwest Montana for five or so months of the year. 

In any case, rather than focus on what I have to look forward to in a month or so, I choose to focus on what is happening right now and that is fall trout fishing.  So after my morning run, I noticed that this was the day of the new moon and that the temperature was quite a bit warmer than it was a couple of days before.  I figured that I should give the old Swan river another shot after my less than stellar performance a day or two ago, so after lunch I headed out. 

On the drive to the river I thought about where to go, and I concluded that I needed to fish the same stretch of river that I had on my last trip, if for no other reason so that I had a record of the difference between trips.  The air temperatures were about 15-20 degrees warmer, there was only a slight wind, and the skies were peppered with a few cloud, but mostly clear.  Would my results be any different?

Just a little bit I would say.   After catching and releasing five or six rainbow trout that were in the 10-13 inch range I hooked and landed one that was about 16 inches.  After missing a few more, I caught another rainbow that went about 16 inches.   Although the weather was much nicer than the prior day, it is the fall remember and my fingers began to become quite chilled after handling so many rainbows, so I decided to call it a day.  The bottom line is that the couple of hours that I spent on the river fishing for trout was well worth it if you go by numbers of trout caught.  All in all it was a good day, and like I have said before it sure beats a couple of hours working.  And now I have a hard record of the difference that a passing fall cold front causes to the trout I enjoy catching so much.