Puddle Shiners and Rock-flipping Sculpins (Western PA Pt. 7)

 Our finale full day in Pennsylvania was upon us and Noah, Jake and I wanted to end the trip on a high note. With lower pressure, cloud cover, and showers in the morning forecast we hoped our luck with the bigger predators might improve. Add to it, my grandfather would be joining us on the water for the first bit of the day, it seemed nothing could be better. At first we may be in luck, as the redhorse, drum, and carp were much more active. One thing I forgot to count on is how bad I sometimes am at hooking bottom feeding roughfish, especially suckers and carp. I have days where I just whiff take after take and this was one of them. I whiffed a few carp. I whiffed a nice drum. Then I reefed the set on a huge redhorse and my leader snapped with a sickening whip-crack. It's a good thing I can nymph channel catfish, apparently, because I got a few of them. They weren't big but I'll take any cat on the fly any time, and indicator nymphing them was new to me. 

Jake ended up getting himself one smallmouth redhorse on a worm, but as the morning wore on it seemed we might not get the big fish we were hoping to. We all aught fish at least, and for my money, Some of Noah's were the funniest. There was a puddle on the walkway above the tunnel, where fisherman stand and soak bait in the deep, roiling dam discharge below. They'd clearly been discarding their minnows in that puddle as it was full of them. 

He got one golden shiner, and I think a spottail shiner too. That these fish were surviving effectively in the puddle demonstrates the problems with discarding live bait. A heavy rain could so easily provide these fish a way into the river, and these weren't all native species. Fisherman are not conscious enough about such things, a tiny cyprinid species could wreck havoc on some important native species and the habitat they need.  

As it began to seem our options at this spot were exhausted, we decided to move along. My grandfather headed out and Noah, Jake and I went to the next spot. It was a small freestone stream suggested to us by my grandfather, where we stood a reasonable shot at Jake getting his lifer rainbow trout, as well as catching good catfish bait for that night in the form of big creek chubs. We filled the bait quota but found no trout, but the odd bass instead.

As we were fishing downstream, a family hopped in just below us and continued on down. Not wanting to fish water that had just been fished, we turned back upstream and headed back towards the cars. Noah rushed ahead as Jake and I lollygagged and fished our way up. We ended up finding a pool with some good darter and sculpin habitat, and started micro fishing it. I flipped some rocks and found that some large mottled sculpins were residing under them. It didn't take long for both Jake and I to catch one, and when Noah wondered where the hell we were and came back down he had little trouble getting them to eat either. At the time, this was a lifer for me, but sine then I'e learned that the tiny sculpin I got further up in the Allegheny watershed was a mottled too. 

Lifelist fish #176, Mottled sculpin, Cottus bairdii. Rank: Species

Sculpins are awesome, I really do adore them. They are beautiful little fish and very charismatic. And honestly, any fish that has the gall to still eat after you've essentially lifted up the roof of his house in order to find him is pretty cool. 

Jake then diverted attention to darters and it payed off, he got a lovely fan tail, a lifer for him.

Fantail darter, Etheostoma flabellare

Then we all caught bluntnose minnows, which were lifers for Noah and I.

Lifelist fish #177. Bluntnose minnow, Pimephales notatus. Rank: species.

With lifers now under our belts, at least we felt some goals had been met and we decided to change spots again and seek bigger fish yet again. 

Until next time,

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Leo, and Franky for supporting this blog on Patreon.

Champlain on the Fly Redux: Bowfin, Gar, and Drum

The last time I fished Lake Champlain left quite a bit to be desired. I got a bunch of pike and bass, that was fun. But leaving a body of water that had great numbers of a bunch of species I had never caught with just one new shiner species was a tiny bit painful. This time was going to be different This time was going to be the best warmwater fly fishing I'd ever had in the Northeast.

Noah and I left on Saturday morning and were at the South Bay boat launch before noon. South bay would provide us with our best opportunity to target longnose gar, a species I am particularly partial to gar because of their prehistoric nature and gorgeous coloration. They are a much maligned fish. There were times when there were moves to eliminate them completely from ecosystems. Even today people treat gar poorly. I have heard stories from Champlain of bass fisherman breaking their jaws off and releasing them alive. The mere thought makes me sick to my stomach.

We were presented pretty immediately with a problem: The lack of sun. With the sun out gar tend to lay up at the surface where they can be sight fished. Clouds makes this less likely, and even if they do lay up top they are harder to see. I started out fishing a gar fly anyway, though I didn't see any around. A fly for longnose gar typically incorporates some kind of long synthetic fibers. Gar have extremely bony mouthes, longnose gar even more so than the other species. It can be extremely difficult to hook them. But getting fibers tangled in their teeth increases the odds of bringing one to hand. The first taker on my "rope fly" was a largemouth bass, unsurprisingly pale in the chalky water.

Sliding into a cut in the water chestnut mats looking to see what there was, I saw the big head and elongate, undulating dorsal of a bowfin. Then another a bit further in. Without hesitation, I changed to a streamer I tied specifically for bowfin. Slow sinking, muted colors, with a very heavy very sharp hook: a tool of bowfin deception. Bowfin are an aggressive fish, but very often they appear not to want to move more than a couple inches for a fly. I got a bunch of shots at bowfin in that cut, many of them actually spooked, probably six of them took the fly. Hooking bowfin is basically a game of luck. You put the iron to them and hope the hook finds meat, not cartilage. After having two come off almost immediately, both big, I dropped my fly on one's nose, twitched it a little, and set hard when it ate. I've been using my ten weight a lot lately for warmwater fish, and I was very thankful for it on this trip. These bowfin fight hard and they were in very snaggy, weedy areas. I had to fight them hard, close, and fast and the ten was up to the task. I didn't loose one bowfin to the weeds.

I got two beauties before we gave that cut a rest. The first large and pale, the second smaller and colorful. I don't think I've caught a bowfin yet that wasn't a downright violent fighter. These suckers act a lot more angry when hooked than bass or pickerel. Since I almost always am in their eye-line when I get them to take, and I know they see me, I think they realize they shouldn't have eaten that enticing looking fly and it pisses them right off.

After a little while it was clear that despite there still being tons of bowfin there, they had grown  weary, so we gave them a rest and headed over to a bridge where we had seen someone catch a sizable crappie. Both of us had kind of forgotten that this part of the lake was a hot spot for white crappie, a species we both needed. It really didn't take long for Noah to catch a couple trophy sized fish. 

A little while later I caught a smaller one, finally adding Pomoxis annularis to my life list. It was not very big, but it was a white crappie. 

To sweeten things just a little bit more, a few drops later I came up with a small drum. Aplodinotus grunniens, freshwater drum. Life list #82. 

While we were under the bridge the sun came out for a bit and the wind died. And, like magic, the gar came out. Tons of them. Big gar, small gar, rolling gar, slapping gar, laid up gar... we drifted a deep flat with gar visible playing all over it. It took me a bit to find ones that I could effectively sight cast to (the gulpers went down too quick), but when I found a laid up of cruising fish, without fail it ate the fly. The rope flies worked. An SF blend bunker worked. I would have liked to have caught a few more of the takers I had, and I'm going to be experimenting with more materials for gar flies in the future. But my first three beautiful longnose gar made the afternoon one I won't soon forget.

Unfortunately, though Noah was actually getting more takes than me he couldn't catch one. While he kept at it I sneaked off to check on the bowfin again. I was quickly rewarded when I spotted a very large one. I dropped my fly in front of it. That fish took some effort. It was not sure it should eat. But I am very convincing, and I ended up bent double on my biggest bowfin after a solid minute of teasing it. I landed it, but I'm not sure who beat up who. I felt like I got my ass kicked even after I let that fish gently swim off.  

So, I ended day one with my biggest bowfin. What a brute to end an awesome day. Three bowfin, three gar, a couple bass, a white crappie, a freshwater drum.

The next day was going to be a little bit different, but no less productive. So stay tuned. 

Lake Champlain Region on the Fly: Rivers and Waterfalls

On Friday Noah and I left CT early enough that we would get to the part of Vermont we wanted to fish with plenty of time to work with in the afternoon and evening hours. The working plan from Friday night into Saturday morning was to start in the south end of one drainage and work north to the mouth. Basically it was and slow start in water with trout, fallfish, and panfish, then work up to pike and bass, then bigger pike, gar, drum, and, though we almost certainly wouldn't catch any....

In fishing a new watershed, there are a few types of structure I will always gravitate to. Dams and waterfalls are among the first spots I will fish on a new river. They are a choke point at the very least, a migration barrier at most for many species. There are always fish under a good dam or waterfall. 

Our first spot was probably the most likely to produce a trout. The water was cold and clear at 63 degrees. Some caddis were coming off. There were a lot of baitfish around including some of the biggest blacknose dace you could find. We caught no trout, though Noah did see what was most likely a large brookie. 

Fallfish, however, were willing participants. 

 Northward we continued, looking for more variety. We found it in a deeper pool bellow another waterfall. Bass, bluegill, pumpkinseeds, and an absurd number of cookie cutter rock bass provided an hour's entertainment, but it didn't seem like much of size was there and eating.

Numbers done.We didn't need to catch more of the same fish. We moved north once more that night, looking for pike in the spot where I caught my first on fly. The situation was very different from that trip, the water was more than four feet lower. The places I found fish that trip weren't fishable this time. It got dark before we could find any pike. It was an interesting night. Frogs and flies dominated the ambiance, though great horned owls and moose vocalizations interrupted the drone of grey tree frogs, green frogs, and mosquitoes.  Fire flies filled the field and the trees we camped near. 

The next morning we were up early to get to the final set of falls we would fish before actually reaching Champlain. 

The two species we really wanted here were freshwater drum and gar. It was pretty clear, based on the overall conditions that drum were probably the only of the two we could hope for. Gar are far easier to fish for if you can see them. Throughout the weekend, I saw gar come up and gulp air three times, all in deep murky water. What we needed was a calm, hot, sunny day. We just weren't getting that. It was the exact opposite. So we focused on drum. An unexpected amount of fishing pressure in the form of a derby probably threw of our chances. 

To find drum we needed to go right to the mouth of the river. We were seeing fish on the graph, lots of fish. A kayaker posted up right across from the launch was steadily filling a bucket with white perch.It seemed like we could get lucky here. But it seemed like finding a needle in a haystack. The needle wasn't a drum in general, it was the one drum out of the bunch that would be interested in eating something. Anything. And Noah found the needle. 

That was it, one of the two species we really made the trip for. Noah got his drum. In the end, I wouldn't find mine. Time would tell if I could add something else to my life list.