Tailin' Blues, Poppin' Bass, and a New Species

The sun was not yet up on Tuesday when Rick and I left the boat launch and headed out to look for predator fish in the near shore waters around Fisher's Island and the Rhode Island shoreline. The moon was full and false dawn was well underway. We had just the right amount of light to navigate out and get to our desired area in time. Bonito were the main target. Though I know now they were numerous not far from where we fished, we never found them. What we did find after a little searching was a bit of a surprise. After months of nothing but the odd small schools of snapper or cocktail blues, we found ourselves looking at hundreds of tailing bluefish. The tide was slack and the surface was glassy and smooth, and the entire length of the ledge we were over was covered with the swirls and tails of slowly finning bluefish, undoubtedly soaking in the morning sun to help themselves digest whatever massive feast they enjoyed during the late night moon tide. These fish were exceedingly skittish. In fact we only got one take from a bluefish out of the tailing fish, and it was on my big white Hollow Fleye. The fish went airborne for the fly, launching out of the water like a torpedo. The hook didn't find flesh though and all I got was the show of that monster blue taking the fly. Stripers though, came up through the schools to smash a Bobs's Banger and the albie snax Rick fished. They weren't big bass, but they were what I call 'upsize schoolies", bass in the 22-28 inch range

When the tide started to move and the rip formed, a few things happened. The tailing blues went down. We started to catch the odd blue. And the popper wasn't working as well anymore. I switched to a Game Changer, Which has proven to be wildly effective on stripers for me in a few different conditions. On this occasion it's subsurface walk the dog action was key. It kicked butt.

When the bite slowed there we went hunting. We covered a fair bit of ground, but didn't find our bonito. On our way between areas I mentioned that it is possible to catch odd species holding on the cans this time of year. We stopped by a red bell buoy. Sure enough, a bunch of small fish chased my fly off the can on the first cast. It took us a little to find a good position, but we did eventually and the spot-lock function on Rick's Minn Kota did its job and did it well. Some we were into some odd little late summer residents: banded rudderfish. We found that just about every can had some. They were odd little fish, with tiny scales and the smoothest slime I'd ever felt. They seemed to prefer sitting ahead of the cans rather than the slicks behind them, and in the ripping flood tide they were tough to pull up even with my 10wt. 

We hopped around a few cans, and all but one had rudderfish. Seeing as there were no other oddball species on the cans, we searched around for a bit before settling on a couple drifts in a spot the produced one fluke and some sea robins for Rick and one robin for myself. Variety is the spice of life! We caught a bunch of fish and some very interesting ones. It was a great day to be on the water. 

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. It is increasingly difficult to maintain this blog under dwindling readership. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Every little bit is appreciated! 

Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines. 

Central PA Summer Trout: The Unnamed

 I got back a couple days ago from a fishing trip to Central Pennsylvania that encompassed three days and four trout streams. I firmly believe there are too many trout streams in Pennsylvania to fish them all in a lifetime, but Mike Carl and I just might try. On this trip we were able to fish four of them including three that neither of us had fished before. On day three we were able to fish a small wild brook trout stream:

THE UNNAMED

This little stream had been on our minds for a little while. We saw it from a distance on our February trip and I saved it's location because it looked so good. Now we were actually there and about to fish it and those glimpses through the leafless winter tree canopy gave way to lush green oaks, laurels, rhododendron, ferns, and hemlocks. My expectations were fairly high for this one. Armed with a classic brook trout fly, a Royal Wulff, I plied the waters looking for aggressive fish. It didn't take long.

The second fish to take well enough to be hooks was a real surprise. It was a new species for me, #85! It was a rosyside dace, Clinostomus funduloides. To the best of my knowledge we weren't in their native range, so that fish's origins are a mystery.

Mike and I were pleased to find that brook trout here were plentiful, colorful, and hungry. There was also a good range of age classes, signifying that this was indeed as healthy a stream as it looked. 

Every good looking pool held a fish or two, sometimes more. Some of them would follow the fly for a long drift before taking... they were no dummies. But they took every time, they didn't refuse.

No trails followed the stream. No boot prints were to be found

Evidently the stream holds some browns as well. I caught one. It was a real beauty. 26 red spots, that fish had. An a gorgeous orange adipose an tail tip.

We only spent a little bit of time on this stream before we had to head for home. But it was enough time to see that this little stream, that will remain unnamed, was an exceptional one that we both want to explore more when we get the chance. The amount we fished was equivalent to about 1/20th of its length.

That's something that Pennsylvania has that we lack quite a bit of here in CT. The vast majority of our streams have intermittent access. Small parts of their length are available to the public. But in Pennsylvania and other less developed states there are countless small streams like this of which long, uninterrupted stretches can be fished. I really wish we had more of that here, but unfortunately urban sprawl can't be reversed. Not by man. The best we can hope is to slow down.

Call me a pessimist.
But I don't see that happening either.

Thanks for inviting me along Mike. It was a great trip. I can't wait to fish Pennsylvania again. 

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. It is increasingly difficult to maintain this blog under dwindling readership. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Every little bit is appreciated! 

Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines. 

Central PA Summer Trout: Penns Creek

 I got back a couple days ago from a fishing trip to Central Pennsylvania that encompassed three days and four trout streams. I firmly believe there are too many trout streams in Pennsylvania to fish them all in a lifetime, but Mike Carl and I just might try. On this trip we were able to fish four of them including three that neither of us had fished before. On day two we were able to fish Penn's Creek.

PENNS CREEK

One of the advantages of this wet summer is that it has made rivers that often aren't so fishable in August most years much higher and colder this year. We had decided the night before that after hitting Spring Creek in the morning that we would fish either the Little Juniata or Penns. We settled on Penns Creek. 

Penns Creek is a big limestone influenced stream. It gets warm most summers, but the upper river and numerous cold tributaries have allowed wild trout to thrive there, browns and some rainbows. The river is most famous for it's green drake hatch, which by all accounts is probably one of the best in the world. Despite much of the river's long course being difficult to access the green drake hatch still results in crowds. Clearly there isn't as much pressure in August: I fished a mile and saw only three other anglers. 

A note if you are going to fish a place like Penns Creek. Don't forget that there are still wild places in the East and Penns is in one of them. When we got there, after driving miles on a dirt road way over a ridge, we had very little gas left in the tank, no cell service at all, and very little in the way of provisions. We drove down towards Weikert to see if there was a gas station there. Weikert was little more than a cluster of homes. Fortunately we were able to get to Laurelton, which was just a slightly larger cluster of homes and farms that also had a Sunoco Station. I went in to get something to drink. One of the two men behind the counter nodded and said "how you doin young feller?"

We moved out of Pennsylvania when I was 8 and moved to a CT town that I've heard called "small" over and over... I never lost sight of the fact that it wasn't, really. These little Pennsylvania communities, surrounded by acres of farmland and then even more acres of wooded hills, these are small towns. To these folks I may as well have been just some city boy. But it wouldn't take long for me to make myself at home in one of these towns. And maybe I will, sometime in the future, if only for a few years. 

Tank refilled and provisions procured we headed back into the valley. I got down to the water as quickly as I could, excited by the prospect of big wild trout in a new and extremely scenic river. I went upriver pretty quickly, at first testing the water with an olive Galloup's Sex Dungeon. After covering a lot of water types at different depths and speeds I was unimpressed by the lack of moved fish. I saw none. No flashes, no takes, no nothing. So I changed leaders and tied on two nymphs, a SH Hare's Ear as the point fly and a Green Weenie 16 inches above it on a tag, with two split shot between them. No takes resulted, so I traded the Hare's Ear for a bigger fly, Pat's Rubber Legs. Two casts later I took a mid teens holdover brown on that fly and quickly cut the Green Weenie I hate fishing two or three flies unless necessary, especially with split shot in the equation, and I just had a feeling I'd only need the Rubber Legs. This turned out to be completely true. 

I covered all water types, thoroughly but also quickly, until I found the type of water most of the trout were holding in. Then I just fished those types of water and skipped most of everything else. I caught all sorts of trout, all sizes and a dramatic range of colors. 

Then, at the point in a long, deep pool where the chop ended and the flat water began, I hooked a fish in about six feet of water that felt very substantial. I thought I had a big brown on. After some give and take it came up, and it was actually a big fallfish. I was less disappointed and more just amused to be looking at one of the biggest fallfish I had ever seen. 

And then, I caught another...

...even bigger one!

Holy smokes what a monster! She had clearly been feeding well in the high water. I had never seen a fallfish of this caliber in person and it was truly impressive. The photos simply do not do her justice, this was a horse. 

At that point I was already on my way back downstream after covering a mile and a half of water. I met back up with Mike and Paolo, took a break, then went downstream from were we had started. I covered a bit of what seemed to be relatively empty water in a side channel before getting to a great looking hole at the point where two braids came back together. I started to fish that water very thoroughly, because I recognized it as being the kind of spot that would hold a fair number of trout. Sure enough I caught three browns before I even got to the best looking water. 

Then, covering the best looking lie in the spot, I set the hook into something much heavier. Initially the fish seemed to do what it would if it were just spooked, carefully leaving it's lie and staying on the bottom, coming across stream. It kept coming, then passed me on the downstream side. This time I was pretty sure I had a monster brown trout on. I started to walk towards shore, both because I wanted to get out of the waist deep water and I wanted to get on the downstream side of the fish. As I reached the bank the fish came up and probably saw me, because all of a sudden it lost it's mind and charged up and across stream, peeling line off the reel and going right back into the strong current I had hooked it in. It then buried itself in there and planted firmly on the bottom. It took me more than a minute to pull it out of there, and then even more than that to finally break its spirit and slide it into shallow water. It wasn't a brown, it was a big, perfectly clean, gorgeous rainbow, only really comparable to fish I'd caught in the Upper Delaware system.  

I laid the fish in the water next to my rod to get an approximate length, it was somewhere between 19 and 21 inches. I'd wager it was towards the lower end of that range. With a big trout finally caught I went back upstream, this time going up the other braid to cover some new water. I got another brown before I got back up to Mike and Paolo, who were casting to rising fish.

I sat and watched, thoroughly tired and satisfied with how I had done on this new river. Another one crossed off the list, and another I will certainly be visiting again.

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Every little bit is appreciated! 
Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines.

Central PA Summer Trout: Spring Creek

Well, I got back last night from a fishing trip to Central Pennsylvania that encompassed three days and four trout streams. I firmly believe there are too many trout streams in Pennsylvania to fish them all in a lifetime, but Mike Carl and I just might try. On this trip we were able to fish four of them including three that neither of us had fished before. But we started on more familiar waters: Spring Creek. And we would fish there a little bit every day. So, instead of doing a post for each day, I'm going to do a post for each place.

SPRING CREEK

PA has been getting quite a lot of rain this summer. Many rivers have blown out severely for extended periods, and Spring Creek is one of them. Two weeks ago it wasn't simply high, it was flooded. By the time we got there it was still way higher than normal but had dropped and cleared and was very fishable. The trico hatch wasn't going to result in good fishing, unfortunately, and nymphing and streamer fishing were going to be the most productive games. You can probably already guess which of those I was going to be doing the most of. 

After stopping in at TCO to get my license and a few flies we met Mike's friend Paolo who had already been fishing the river for a while. The bite hadn't been strong. I pretty quickly tied on a back woolly bugger, and though I got a take on it fairly quickly I didn't like how much water I covered without takes. There are a lot of fish in Spring Creek, they are just everywhere, so if you aren't getting takes it probably isn't because you aren't fishing over trout. Change what you are doing. I tied on a heavier, bigger complex twist bugger in olive, orange, and rust, and quickly got more chases and grabs. These fish moved quick and there was often little to be done about hooking most of them, they were just swiping at the fly. I just had to wait until one took more aggressively. And, eventually, one did. Unfortunately it wasn't the 16-17 inch bridge dweller.

I caught a couple more fish, tiny ones, on a stimulator, but that was it for the first evening in Pennsylvania. We quit before dark because there wasn't really a late hatch to worry about and we wanted to eat, get to our Airbnb, and be on the water fairly early the next morning.

Thursday morning dawned clear and cool. We finished breakfast right around sunrise and made our way towards Bellefonte. Though the water was high for this trip it wasn't like it had been in February, which was to my liking because we would get to fish water that was barely fishable that last trip. The section we fished both Thursday and Friday morning would have been next to impossible to wade in late February. 

If fishing big streamers is your thing Spring Creek need not be high one your list of places to visit. For most of it's length you'd be best off leaving any fly over four inches in the car. Your best productivity for both larger fish and large numbers of fish will be on 2-3 inch sculpin and juvi brown trout imitations. That is what the carnivorous trout in Spring Creek are eating, not 7 inch fallfish or brookies. For this stretch of water, which harbors bigger browns than much of the river, I fished two patterns primarily, both articulated flies intended to imitate young brown trout. They worked, many trout committed to eating them and quite a few came to hand. 

I fished the fly casting across stream and retrieving with short strips. I cast at shadow lines, seems, bank structure, overhanging brush, cut banks... everything had fish and no one way was best, really.

After a while activity seemed to die down significantly, so we left for Penns Creek. That will be the topic of the next post. While we were away, the flow continued to drop and the water continued to clear  on Spring Creek. There was some hope that we'd get a good spinner fall on Friday morning. Unfortunately, it didn't materialize. The streamer bite had gotten worse in correspondence with the improving water clarity, and I got nowhere near as many takes. But I did get a few.

The last Spring Creek fish of the trip for me, though not even quite an average size fish or particularly colorful, was very satisfying. I caught it fishing a scud at in the fast water at the head of a pool. Fishing scuds and cressbugs is synonymous with nymphing PA limestoners. It isn't really something that we get to do here and CT, and it can be a little tricky. It was fun to catch just one doing that on this trip.

If you enjoy what I'm doing here, please share and comment. What best keeps me going so is knowing that I am engaging people and getting them interested in different aspects of fly fishing, the natural world, and art. Follow, like on Facebook, share wherever, comment wherever. Every little bit is appreciated! 

Thanks for joining the adventure, and tight lines.