Fallfish are the fish nobody sets out for and everybody catches. The largest member of the minnow family native to the Northeast, they fill our rivers and streams and eat the same flies and lures as trout, so trout anglers land them constantly. Get past the bycatch reputation and they are a willing, scrappy, honest fish that will bend a light rod all day.
How to identify them
Fallfish are streamlined and silvery with large, clean scales that give them a chrome, herring-like flash, a slightly sub-terminal mouth, and, on spawning males, a rosy tint and small tubercles on the head. Big ones are impressively large for a minnow, which is exactly why an excited angler sometimes mistakes one for a trout or a small salmon on the take.
Where they live
Fallfish are river and stream fish, holding in runs, pools and pockets in the same moving water that holds trout and smallmouth. They are widespread and abundant across New England flowing water, so if you fly fish rivers here, you already know them.
Tip Fallfish are great practice fish. On a slow trout day they will happily eat nymphs, streamers and dries, so use them to sharpen your drift, mending and hooksets, they are more fun than an empty net.
How to catch them
Anything that catches river trout catches fallfish: nymphs, streamers and dry flies on a light fly rod, and small spinners, spoons and soft plastics on ultralight spinning gear. They are not picky, they are aggressive, and a big fallfish pulls harder than its reputation suggests.
Handling
Most fallfish are released, they are bony and not prized eating. Handle them as you would a trout, wet hands, quick release, and enjoy them for what they are: a native fish that keeps our rivers, and our rod tips, busy.