Should You Fish in August?

Well, it's generally accepted trout-fishing wisdom that -- assuming you are practicing catch-and-release fishing -- August is a bad month to fish for trout. But it has more to do with water temperature than any one specific month.

For one thing, a trout's metabolic activity slows down as water temperatures increase, causing them to feed less and attempt to conserve energy by staying cool in the deeper parts of the streams. So you flat-out won't get as much action.

Second, and maybe most importantly, in warmer water temperatures, you risk killing a fish just by the simple act of catching it. Trout thrive in oxygen-rich water and that means cold, fast-moving water. When the water is neither cold nor fast-moving, it doesn't have a lot of oxygen in it, and therefore trout have more difficulty breathing. 

Therefore, when you place a great amount of stress on fish in warm -- i.e. making it fight for it's life on the end of your fishing line -- the fish may get so depleted of oxygen that it cannot recover after the fight, and dies. Imagine yourself sprinting a mile in 90 degree weather then running directly into a hot tub, and that's about the idea.

So, does this mean you should not go trout fishing in August? Not necessarily. 

1.) Check the temperature of the water you're fishing. If it's 65 degrees F or under (some say 68) you can safely fish for most trout species without fear of inadvertently killing the fish. Anything above 67/68 degrees F is kind of like the trout danger zone, and you're better off just waiting till water temps cool down.

2.) If the water is over 67 degrees and you plan to keep the fish you catch, then -- as long as you're doing it within state regulations, on approved trout water, and within creel limits -- by all means, fish away. Just realize that if you fight a fish and lose it, that may be the fish's last fight whether it ends up on your grill or not. So unless you are really hungry or a really good fisherman, you may want to consider whether it's really worth the risk of unnecessarily killing a trout. 

There is a third scenario which I would almost call an "act of mercy" scenario, in which I caught and kept the rainbow trout in the picture. I was fishing a favorite fishing hole on Flintstone Creek, near Cumberland, Md. in mid July and the water was so low that nothing was flowing out of the tail of the pool. What resulted was a languid pool of water with hardly any movement. The pool was chock full of tiny blue gill and bass that would go after anything and everything I threw into the pool, along with a couple big carp and one trout patrolling the bottom of the pool somewhat desperately. 

It was a small space for all those fish. It had not rained in weeks, and the water was not going to get any deeper or cooler any time soon. Therefore, I determined to catch and eat the only rainbow in the pool, almost as an act of mercy, rather than allow it to suffer in an environment short of food and oxygen. 

I do not keep trout often, but as long as I'm doing it legally, and I eat the fish, I have no problem with it. Especially not in such a case. 

So, fish away during any month of the year, including August. But if the water temperature is over 67 degrees F you should seriously consider whether it's worth the risk of needlessly killing a trout.