Weiss: Rochester’s Atwell revels in the joy of trout fishing in fall – Post Bulletin

CHATFIELD — Trout are beginning their spawning cycle, trees along streams are turning oranges, yellows and red, the air has a cool zip to it and Christie Atwell is getting serious about trout fishing.

Finally. Fall.

Atwell, of Rochester, enjoys fishing for trout around here in spring, hits streams maybe a few times in hot summer, but come fall, she fishes in earnest. Yet it’s a seriousness spiced with glee and joy. She revels in the entire experience — fish, colors, wildlife and the feel of moving water. She’s even been known to give a trout a big kiss before slipping it back into the stream. 

What’s fascinating about her, too, is some of those trout she catches are big, probably more often than average. She’s not a gotta-catch-the-trophy angler, she doesn’t target them, she just loves to fish trout and sometimes, for some reason, her trout are bigger.

Atwell said she has caught some really nice brown trout, and even two rare tiger trout, but doesn’t think she does anything special. “I don’t expect it,” she said. “All the big ones I have caught, I have not been going for them … all the big ones I’ve caught (were a) surprise.”

“She does miss fish just like everyone, but she doesn’t fret over it and just keeps fishing,” said Wayne Bartz of Rochester, who gave her her first fly fishing lesson and is still her mentor. “I think she catches big fish because of her concentration. She just sets the hook correctly without thinking about it. I’ve seen that a lot with women anglers. So many men think they have a natural ability, maybe the genetic ability, to catch fish.” Those teaching fishing will usually say women are easier to teach “because they listen and do as told,” he said.

Oddly, Atwell has never quite reached the 20-inch mark, which is unofficial trophy brown trout length in the southeast (her fishing in British Columbia is a whole different story). Well, maybe one caught several years ago around here hit that mark, she said, but it was never measured so it doesn’t count. Her most memorable trout was an 18.5-inch brown caught “in a stream you could pretty much jump over.”

Should Atwell catch that measured 20-incher, or bigger, she will be proud and “I would give it a kiss,” she said.

With the coolness of fall, along with its colors and more active wildlife, she takes as many days as she can from her financial consulting business to fish. Any stream she fishes, and she’s fished many, is her favorite.

Her chances of getting the elusive 20-incher is better this time of the year, said Vaughn Snook, assistant Department of Natural Resource fisheries supervisor in Lanesboro. Trout are beginning to spawn and that brings the big ones more into the open. “The big fish are more likely to make a mistake when they are spawning,” he said. They become more territorial so they are more aggressive and might take a swing at a fly they would ignore in summer. Finally, they are getting ready for the lean times of winter so they are feeding heavier, he said.

Last week, during her third outing of the week, Atwell again decided on Trout Run southeast of Chatfield where she fished the day before and caught a 15-inch brown. 

Fly fishing on a southeast stream was not where she thought she would be in her fishing life when she grew up. She said she grew up in LaCrosse, Wis., in an outdoorsy family. Walleye was king and she fished them in Minnesota and into Canada. She moved to Rochester in 1996 and her husband, Dr. Tom Atwell, did fish with a fly rod.

It wasn’t until she she got a birthday present to fish with Bartz that Christie Atwell picked up a fly rod. She loved it, but “I spent several years flailing,” she said. The flailing turned into getting better and now, she casts gracefully and accurately, both with larger flies and tiny dry flies. Like every angler, however, her flies and tippets are magnetically attracted to any twig, branch or leaf above the water, or rocks and trees below the water. “If you’re not hooking stuff, you aren’t getting deep enough,” she said. 

On the famous stream, known for a lot of trout, she walked a while, passing up nice pools with trout swimming around. That wasn’t for her. Bartz says this time of year, look in deeper riffles, up to 24 inches, or near those riffles to find bigger trout that are looking to build redds (nests in rubble) or to fertilize eggs females will lay there.

Her strategy, should she hook into a big one, was simple: “Hold your breath and say a little prayer.” She knows she will be beaten now and then by trout because anglers never stop learning and the fish never stop being trout. “It’s a humbling sport,” she said.

Her first casts were near the base of a riffle, but Atwell wasn’t expecting much — yet. “The sun, I’d like it to be a little bit higher,” she said.

Finally, a strike. A beautiful 13-inch brown. “He showed himself, he chased it out there and I saw him; the second time, he hit,” she said. “He was willing to eat, he was willing to come out and play … every take is beautiful.”

John Weiss / contributed

Her high-sticking and dead-drifting a nymph, tied with a tungsten bead, was precise; at times, Atwell had to mend her cast but usually, it was right on. “You don’t want it dragging, try to get it as natural as possible,” she said. She was able to sight fish — spotting a fish and going for it — because Trout Run was clear.

On fall days like that last week, she knows fishing can be slow, slow, slow and then, boom! “It’s strike, strike, strike, strike. Yesterday after it turned on, it was fish everywhere,” she said.

She continued probing, checking riffles, and boom, a fish that fought gloriously but it wasn’t THAT big. But it was a rainbow. “I’ll be darned, that’s a first,” she said.

As she fished, she gave a good play-by-play analysis. One time she spotted a fish interested in a fly. “See it, See it, SEE it,” she said. Then it turned tail. “I’ve always had follows on that fly.”

Three smaller ones slowly approached a fly. “Come on boys, come on fish,” she said, encouraging them. They snubbed her.

Finally, a following fish struck, jumped and went wild to the delight of Atwell. “Look at those fall colors, they’re beautiful,” she said, holding it up. For its acrobatics, the bold-colored brown got a kiss before being released.

Atwell never let up with that exuberant glee. She added a dropper to her fly and issued an all-points-bulletin: “You have been warned fish.”

One hit took her line for a quick ride and threw the hook. “It was 14, 15, he will grow longer if I wait long enough,” she said.

When some fish began to dapple the surface, she hurried to change from a nymph to dry. She hurried, but fumbled line. “All of a sudden, you become an idiot at tying flies,” she lamented. “By the time you switch up, (the trout go) here we go, we’re done,” Atwell said. 

Finally, she decided it was time to go. Okay, maybe it was time to head back and fish as she went. She saw a doe standing in the woods; it spooked when a buck snorted on the bluff above it. As Atwell walked, she was drawn to the sound of rushing water and couldn’t resist just a few casts. She broke off. “The universe is telling me I’m done.”

In the next few weeks, trout will get bolder in color and temperament, trees will get more colorful, the air cooler and Atwell will continue her love of moving waters and trout fishing.

The elusive 20-incher? 

Maybe.