The Elusive Burrowing Carp

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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

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Noah and I had once theorized it, but I never thought I'd see it in reality. And then, on Tuesday morning, it happened.

I had been on the trout stream from 7:30 until false dawn (4:15ish) and it was a pretty good bite, but I wasn't tired enough to want to miss out on a potential morning carp bite. So, I went searching. And I found wind. That was no good. And then I found a sheltered place with one carp that didn't hang around long enough for me to present to. Also no good. After searching a bunch more water, I found both good sight fishing conditions and a feeding carp. It wasn't an especially large carp, but I wasn't going to be picky as this was my first chance to present a fly to a tailing fish this year. I missed my first chance. The fish moved out of range. But I stuck around and waited for it to show back up. I knew that carp in this spot tended to make a circuit of the cove and it would eventually come back around. It did, and I presented a dark grey Woolly Bugger to it a few times before it took. The initial fight was very lethargic. The fish lulled me into a false sense of security... I was pretty confident I was going to land it without issue. And then it threw me the curve ball of all curve balls... it nosed down, start pumping it's tail violently, a buried itself entirely in the bottom. There was an eruption of bubbles and mud and then nothing but my line going down into the bottom.

It happened so damn fast I thought the fish must have just done what I've had many carp do before and quickly rubbed it's head and flank against the bottom (a behavior designed to shake parasites but sometimes done while hooked as well), dislodge the fly or tangled the leader and broke off, and left enough of a smoke scene of mud and bubbles that I didn't see it leave the scene of the crime. I hopped up on the guardrail behind me to see if I could see it somewhere... no sign. It must still be on, I thought. I started to pull, putting as much strain on my 5wt and 4x tippet that I was comfortable. Sure enough, very suddenly, bubbles and mud erupted from the bottom again and the carp emerged from its subterranean hiding spot, somehow having turned completely around and remained hooked. This was one of those wild moments that I live for as an angler, and I can honestly say, no photos could do the job, not even a video could. Even if you were there seeing it with me, your experience would be inherently different from mine. From my perspective, that carp couldn't possibly have done anything cooler. Added to that, it was a gorgeous bi-color.

That made my morning. I caught the elusive burrowing carp. I went home, had a second breakfast, and then took a quick nap.

Just after dark, there was a good heavy downpour. I knew something out there would be likely to bite. It turned out to be carp, and I got to see some more fun carp behavior. Where a small drainage ditch emptied into the pond and an overhanging streetlight illuminated the bottom, I could see the shadows of ravenously feeding carp. I've found carp to be incredibly easy to deceive in these circumstances.  Sure enough, it only took five minutes. White woolly bugger. Slurp.

Fish that burrow into the ground when hooked. Sight casting at 11:30pm under the light of streetlights. I am a really lucky guy, getting to see and do these kinds of things.

I can't think of anything in my life that engages me and challenges me as much as fly fishing. And were I not so willing to fish for any and all species in any and all water bodies possible, it wouldn't be even one tenth of one percent as challenging and rewarding as it is. 

Natives Close to Home

I've spent some time on small bodies of water close to home within the last few days, and I've caught some beautiful native fish.

Redbreast sunfish (Lepomis auritus) range from Central Florida north along the East Coast just into Canada.  They tend to like rocky or sandy streams and lakes, and will inhabit small ponds with connections to streams as well. Males and females show very different morphology during spawning time, and it takes only a quick glance to discern between the two. Dapping a foam beetle in the margins of a mill pond the other night, I caught great examples of both.

Male redbreast sunfish 

Female redbreast sunfish

Pumpkinseed sunfish (Lepomis gibbosus) range from the Eastern Georgia border to Northern Maine on the east coast, west through the Great Lakes to the far Eastern Dakotas, and back south into parts of Iowa, extreme Northeast Missouri, and Illinois. They occupy both a broader range than redbreast and as broader variety of habitats, from freestone streams to near blackwater swamps. Redbreast and pumpkinseeds can hybridize, though I still haven't found one in my years of sunfish hunting, despite having seen redbreast paired with pumpkineeds in the very spot I caught this beautiful specimen:

Colors that would make a brook trout jealous.

Redfin pickerel (Esox americanus americanus), a subspecies of American pickerel, ranges from the Lake Champlain watershed and extreme Southern Maine south to Central Florida, from the spine of the Appalachians to the coast, then around the southern tip of that range into Alabama and Mississippi. Redfin pickerel thrive in shallow, weedy water. Blackwater swamps and slow, meandering streams are their favorite habitats, though they can also survive in freestone streams within small pockets of shallower weedy water, which is where I found my favorite fish of the hundred or so I caught in the last three days, an absolute stud of a redfin pickerel.

Everyone, no matter where they live, has some kind of wild, native fish species not that far from home. Don't forget about them.

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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

Convergence '19: Raining on my Dreams

The warm glow of streetlights and porch lights, carved up by tree limbs, illuminates the surface of the river. In the reflections, the erratic moves of river herring just below the surface are revealed. Wakes, ripples, rolls, and splashes. The constant trill of american toads is periodically interrupted by the "who cooks for you" of a barred owl in a hemlock. Water drips from my soaked and wrinkled pointer finger as the moisture clinging to my fly line collects on it with each slow, deliberate strip. That finger registers the faint tick of a herring broadsiding the fly. Then both my rod hand and stripping hand register a massive jolt. I point the rod straight, grab the line tightly, and pull back hard with both. Then again. Then again. 50 feet out in the river, a massive striped bass makes its anger known by thrashing violently, sending spray ten feet or more in the air, then rights itself under the water and shakes it's head, sweeping it back and forth furiously and deliberately. My ten weight rod bucks two feet with each shake. Oh yes. This is the one.

And then I wake up.

Even though it's less than 60 degrees in my room, my shirt is soaked with sweat. I sit up and have to focus to catch my breath. My heartbeat gradually goes back to a normal, healthy pace. I grasp for my phone. 1:30 a.m. 

May as well tie a couple flies.

That was the first week of March. It was still cold. The rivers hadn't really started to wake up yet, but obviously I had. I had been waiting all winter. All through late fall, actually too, because it was an awful weather fall. I now live for two times of year: spring and fall. Everything between is just filler. And the spring... I really do get more excited for it than fall. Coming out of the relatively dull fishing of winter, spring's chaos is exactly what I need. Anadromous species make their upriver runs to spawn, joined by the juveniles of the catadromous American eels and freshwater species that also make upriver runs. On their heels are large predator fish, and already waiting for them are birds of prey and a variety of mammals. When they all converge , be it in small coastal creeks, big rivers, or inland tributaries, it is one of life's most remarkable displays. And between The last week of March and the middle of June, there is nothing I'd rather do than traipse all over the state of Connecticut trying to intercept these convergences as many times as possible. It's exhausting. It can be very frustrating. But it has also given me some of the best experiences of my life. I prepare for the spring runs as soon as the last fall run stripers leave in December. Shad flies, sucker spawn patterns, glass eels, giant herring imitations, and more get tied. Leaders get pre-tied and tapered. Gear is gone over once, twice, three times. Rods must be clean and ready, not a speck of dust anywhere, no crack or blemish unnoticed. Reels are unspooled, lines cleaned, and respooled with no kinks or overlaps or poorly tied backing connections. Everything needs to be ready, because there's no time to lose. And when I'm not preparing, I'm thinking about the spring run. Or dreaming about the spring run. But no amount of planning, thinking, or dreaming could actually guarantee I have a good run. And from the start, this spring seemed it wouldn't turn out the way I wanted it to. 

The sucker run began quietly at the end of March. I found fish in a few places, but was hampered by the trout season closure. And when I did find suckers in open water they were entirely uninterested in taking my flies. 

By the time trout season opened, most rivers were so high that sight fishing became an impossibility. The sucker run came in went without me catching a single one. Before it was over, the alewives came. The same problems that prevented me from catching a sucker stopped me from catching holdover stripers moving on the early herring. Heavy runoff plagued the big rivers for weeks. Places I would stand with water just above my ankles were got as deep as eight feet. Mediocre runs plagued a lot of the smaller rivers not as severely effected by the runoff, and those places that had good runs were those I couldn't realistically make it to with any sort of consistency. I had one big bass blow up on a herring right under my rod tip in April, and that's the closest I came to anything for the whole month. Friends of mine caught early arriving schoolies in the marshes. I wouldn't get to some of my April hot spots from previous years at all that month. It sucked. It really did. And it just would not stop raining. My dream seemed farther away than ever. It seemed to me like this would be the spring run that wasn't. Thankfully, big walleye and crappie kept me moderately sane. 

Then came May. 

To be continued.... 

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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

Micros at Night

It didn't take me much time seeking new species to realize that I could find a broad variety of fish at night simply by walking the shallows with a bright light, seeing whatever was there to see. And after I started doing that, I discovered that a certain number of species remain willing to eat while being lit up by a bright light. Why? I don't know. But micro fish especially seem to have a pretty relaxed attitude about being spot-lighted. And, honestly, there's no other way to catch them at night. Micros, bottom feeders, and other species that require sight fishing methods to capture at night using artificial flies at night, I will spotlight. For everything else, it feels dirty to me. And doesn't really work either.

But I digress....

I've spent an immense amount of time walking around in the shallows of lakes, ponds, rivers, small streams, and estuaries at night with a light on. And as things have warmed up this spring I've started to do so again. 

Juvenile American eel ((yellow phase) Anguilla rostrata)  hiding in the rocks. 

Blacknose dace, Rhinichthys atratulus

 With a full moon wrecking the night trout fishing last weekend on my part time home water and only one small brown and a jumbo common shiner on the mouse in a few hours, I made the switch over to spotlighting and tanago hook flies.

Large male common shiner, Luxilus cornutus

 Tessellated darters were the most abundant targets. It's funny, they all have different personalities. Some will spook as soon and the lands in front of them. Others with let you touch them with it repeatedly but won't spook or take it. Others will nip it once or twice then run away. A few will keep eating it even if you've hooked them, lifted them out of the water, and then lost them.
Females are the most abundant and also the most dull, so I tried to seek out the more robust and colorful males. I still ended up with more than a dozen females.

Tessellated darter, female. Etheostoma olmstedi

I was also seeing a lot of small white suckers, and I was determined to catch one of them. It didn't surprise me in the slightest that they wouldn't take a fly alone. But I won't lie, I was a little taken aback by how quickly I got one when I tipped the fly with a little bit of worm. I really thought they'd be harder than that. I caught four in total.

White sucker, Catostomus commersonii

Another surprise was that I caught both a bluegill and a green sunfish. I've found sunfish to be a bear to deceive under a spotlight. The greenie made off before a photo op was allowed.

Bluegill, Lepomis macrochirus

 Then I found what I was looking for, a studly male tessellated darter. What a handsome little beast he was!

Tessellated darter, male.

 

Spotlighting at night is liable to produce a pretty large number of new micro species for me this year if I can just get to the places where those new species are. I'm running out of them close to home. 

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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

A Monster Small Stream Brown

The last time I caught a wild brown trout of 20 inches or better, I was on the lower reaches of the Beaverkill in June of 2017. Since then, I've caught a bunch of 17, 18, and 19 inches. Good fish. Great fish, really. But not 20 inchers. I caught bigger wild rainbows, actually, including a 20" in Pennsylvania and a rainbow of a lifetime at night in Montana. And I got some giant broodstock, but those don't count. Big browns have given me the slip for a couple years. I've had some on and lost them, I've missed a bunch, and I've seen a bunch. But I couldn't get one to hand. Were I as trout focused as I was four years ago I probably would be catching big browns more. But I've been fishing for a lot of other things. I regret it less than none. I'm not a trout bum, I'm a fish bum.
I had some expectations of where, when, and how I'd catch my next wild brown over 20 inches. And none of them were right.

In a plunge pool below a small roll dam on a stretch of small stream that had appeared troutless until just a few weeks ago, an old fish made a critical error.

The full moon and relatively clear skies both Friday and Saturday night hampered the night bite on the bigger waters. I slugged it out until 12:30 on Friday and then just gave in and spotlighted tessellated darters and juvenile white suckers, which was a blast, and I will write about that in the next post. On Saturday I decided to fish the streams I had done incredibly well in the weekend before last (11 Hours) in the evening hours. Given that these streams hadn't been fishing well at all, at least for trout, any time I'd tried them in a good number of years, I wasn't willing to let a good thing slip away. I wanted to enjoy this while it lasted. I brought out the 5wt, and fished my confidence fly, the Ausable Ugly. I was promptly into the same small browns that I'd found to be so abundant last time.
And while I found the brown trout, the ticks found me. This is shaping up to be a really bad tick year.

After catching that one fish and missing another of equal size, I continued down to the stream the tributary feeds, and found there that the bite was just as good as it had been before, despite the tributary having been much less loaded. There were tons of trout. There were trout in just about every bit of good holding water. It reminded me of Spring Creek... just trout everywhere.

 I had it set in mind to go downstream only as far as a hole in which I had lost a substantial fish in last time before turning around and fishing some water I hadn't yet hit this spring. I got to the spot, covered the secondary lies and caught a smaller brown, then made the difficult cast into a gap between branches, landing the fly hard because I knew the fish was upstream of where I could drop the fly and it would have to be a "lateral line take". If the fish didn't feel the fly, the fish wouldn't know it was there. The presentation did exactly what it should have. The fish came out, spotted the fly, ate it, and I stuck her. It was a great small stream wild brown and a phenomenal fight.

I hiked my way upriver to the new water, skipping a bunch that didn't provide the kind of habitat trout need, and popped back down into the stream at this great long run:

Three fish to hand and two small ones missed in there. Phenomenal! I hadn't fished this water as much as the stretches downstream, but wen I did it was even more bleak. I still don't fully understand where these fish all came from.

I picked pockets as I continued upstream, and like below, there were trout just about everywhere there should have been trout. I was missing most of them because they were tiny, but the were there and that's all I wanted to know. It didn't take long for me to catch lucky number 13. Number 13 was brookie! From that point on I caught 1 brookie to every 3 or 4 browns, which made me even more happy.

I had caught my 28th trout when I got to the small dam, a spot that I'd fished twice over the winter and was amazed didn't produce fish. It was such a classic spot. I knew I was going to catch something out of it this time. Had expectation that what proceeded was a likely scenario.

Right in the tailout I missed a small fish. Directly in line with it and four feet upstream I hooked up and a powerful, large-spotted fish of 11 inches came to hand. I should have brought this up, but all of these fish were really fired up. I've caught wild brown trout in New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Montana, and of course Connecticut, but pound for pound these ones were beating trout I've caught everywhere else except PA limestoners, which they were easily tied with. These fish threw down. Wild fights.

After letting that fish go I worked the heart of the pool. Nothing. I was a little surprised about that. A solid fish in a tertiary lie and nothing in the secondary? Of course the primary holding spots in any good roll dam plunge are where the current has undercut the structure, right under the plunge. That's where I cast next, and I wasn't at all surprised when another solid fish took and charged right under the dam. But I was very surprised by what happened next: That guy turned tail and came flying out from under the dam at full speed, coming right at me. I just barely kept tension, but the fish stayed on. What would cause a fish to make such a move? 

Enter Dave. 

Dave is the name I've given to the monster of a small stream wild brown trout that came out from under the dam chasing my hooked fish. As soon as I saw it I swore out loud and went stalk still. I moved only my lower arms and the rod, hoping I could land what now looked like a rather small fish without the monster seeing me. The smaller trout jumped over and over trying to escape the big cannibal right on it's tail. Eventually the big fish calmly slid back up into the white water and I landed, photographed, and released the hooked fish. 

The object of Dave's interest.

Without much thought, I lopped my leader down to an adequately stout length and diameter and tied on a five inch articulated streamer that didn't look entirely unlike a small brown trout. I made four casts to the spot where I thought the big fish had come from. Nothing. The fifth cast was made further to the left. I had almost given up on that cast, the fly was already well out of the good zone, when the monster came charging downstream out of the white-water and slammed the streamer. I strip-set hard and he was on. The first move was just what I'd expect under the circumstances. He wanted to go back to his home under the dam. But I had other plans. I jumped into the hole and angled my rod low and away from the fish, the top two feet of it under water at that time. I was surprised by how easily I pulled him back out, but I also don't think he had fully grasped what was going on yet. The fish rolled and shook near the surface, and I worked him right over to me. I decided I should let the fish know it needed to work harder. I might have landed it right then and there but I knew he was way too green, and such a fast landing can end badly for both anger and fish. So instead of trying to tail him I gave in a little slap on the tail. 

He responded accordingly. He tried to get back home again but I stopped him. he then spent the remaining time tail walking all over the pool like  a complete maniac. 

Then I got him. 

This was a small stream beast. An absolute stud. CT small streams don't produce trout like this often, and I've been lucky enough to catch two of them. A small stream wild trout like this deserves the utmost respect. To kill one like it is sinful and will bring bad karma. Handle them gently, admire them, and speak of them reverently. And, of course, give them a good name. 

Dave

Dave measured 22 inches, from the butt to 3 and a half inches past the 'p' in 2pc on my rod. What an awesome, stunningly beautiful, impressively gnarly trout. He was just about exactly the same size as Grandfather was when I caught him (Grandfather), but from a stream about half the size as my home water. Dave is probably at least 12 years old. Had that wise old fish not come out after the smaller fish I highly doubt I would have caught him. That was his critical mistake. Luckily for Dave, I know how special and valuable fish like him are. 

It has been so, so long since I touched a brown trout like that. Hopefully I won't have to fish nearly as long for the next. This spring's fishing has been probably my best ever on a lot of levels. Hell, this whole year has been great so far. I should have known it would be when my first fish of the year was a 38 inch snook. Hopefully my good fortune persists. 

33 trout to hand and one 22 incher. Something special is happening in that little stream. I will be back soon. 

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. Also, consider supporting me on Patreon (link at the top of the bar to the right of your screen, on web version). Every little bit is appreciated! Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, and Christopher, for supporting this blog.

Look at These Fish

It pains me to see the onesightedness of many fly fisherman, and I feel obligated to every now and then voice my opposition to this. It has gotten better, I think. But there are still so many anglers that cling to a type of fish to the exclusion and sometimes destruction of others.

Trout aren't everything.

If I had a dime for every time someone said "show me a more beautiful fish..." in reference to a specific species, I'd be drowning in dimes. I believe this attitude is destructive for both the sport and conservation. When it comes to native species, valuing one over another is dangerous. And when it comes to non-native species, valuing one of them over a native species is even more dangerous.

My continued frequent featuring of a wide range of native and non-native fish species is an attempt to combat this. Fish are beautiful. Fish are amazing. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't photograph fish to say "look at me!", I photograph fish to say "look at these fish!".

So... look at these fish!

There is no such thing as a trash fish. Period.