On Glorious Ice, Which is Now Dead

The weather seems more erratic in late fall and winter every year. This December was just crazy. There have been two good ice windows here in CT. There maybe, maybe still is some now at high elevations, but I'm not going to bother after this rain and these warm temperatures. But before this warm spell settled in, there was good ice locally and I had myself a good ol' time jigging panfish. I also found carp under clear ice, and I regret not putting in some time to try to catch them with bolt rigs on tip-ups after I located them. I also wish I'd put in any effort at all to photograph them. It was really cool though, walking around four feet above feeding and resting carp, some of which were in excess of 30lbs.

My best day thus far I spent messing around with some Eurotackle soft plastics. It was probably my best volume day ever, The action was so hot and heavy in such a small area I was moving fish via bucket to a different hole to release so as not to spook the school. Releasing a bunch of fish right back into the school can put the uncaught ones on edge and make them remain uncaught.  I was filling up a bait bucket with about 10 fish, releasing them all at the same time 40 ft from where I was catching them, then repeating the process. It appeared to work... one hole, three hours, 70 bluegills and 4 black crappies seems pretty clear to me. The crappies were below average, most of the bluegills were average for this pond but a dozen were decent sized. I'd have kept some of the middle sized ones were it not a questionable, shallow, muddy, goose poop filled industrial mill pond I was fishing.

The clock is running down. The year is almost up. I'm glad I got some time on the ice in 2019 as it was not a great year in CT for it. I do hope the rest of this winter is consistently good conditions for either ice fishing or open water fishing but that rarely seems to be the case anymore. Inconsistent is the new normal. Climate change is real.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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

On Christmas Eve Day

Ever since I caught my first trout over 20 inches on Christmas Eve Day in 2013, a spectacular wild brown I name Grandfather, I have fished my home river on either the 23rd or 24th every year since. Rain or shine, cold or warm, I was there. None of those trips were notably bad in terms of fishing, in fact this is a reliably productive time of year for numbers and size. But the conditions on the 24th this year didn't look great. Despite the recent warm spell, I knew a few days in the 40's wouldn't be enough to really warm up the water. My home water sits in some serious topography with a lot of hemlock, it doesn't get much sun. It takes a while to warm up. Iced in banks, cold water, bluebird skies were to be expected. I could deal with the ice, it wasn't really over the water, but the combination of high barometric pressure and cold water made it likely the fish would be in a funky mood. That was the reality of the situation, I caught five fish total over two miles of river covered thoroughly, and only one wild fish. For whatever reason the holdovers were more obliging, which was especially odd as up until this trip there had seemed to be none this fall.

I started out at the bridge pool, where I caught Grandfather six years prior, the first time I've fished it on this annual trip since then. I don't fish it as often as other parts of the stream for a variety of reasons, foremost of which being that it only occasionally holds wild trout. In fact, aside from Grandfather, I've only ever caught two other wild trout there, a brown and a brookie. Other wild fish, often completely unexpected ones like a pair of crappies I caught there one day, do show up there. But on this trip I got what a more typical bridge pool resident, a holdover rainbow.

All but one fish took a Walt's Worm. The outlier took a BHHESH. Typical. I might fish midges here next time, maybe that would have done better in that high pressure and could water. But I doubt it. I've fished Zebra Midges and WD40's plenty there and can count on one hand the number of fish they caught. It's mostly a caddis and stonefly game in the winter. But I've improved as a nympher in recent years so it is possible I'd be able to present small midges more effectively than I did in the past.

The one wild brown trout I caught wasn't at all big, but I was pleased about the way I caught her and she was an incredibly beautiful fish. It is all too easy on water you've fished hundreds of times before to think after a couple drifts through a lie you've been thorough enough, and I do fall into that more than I should. I made as many drifts through the lie as I normally would but felt I was missing something. I changed my position ever so slightly and altered my cast and I caught a fish because of that. Just as easily I could have moved on, as I have done many times before.

That moment was the high of the day, and I rounded the next bend thinking things may be on the up-swing.

That wasn't the case.

Instead, I walked right into a situation I didn't want to and wouldn't wish on anyone. I won't, I can't go into real detail. Suffice to say, I was forced to make the hardest decision I've ever made and I will never quite be the same for it. I think I made the right choice, but it will be a long time before I stop thinking about it. When you spend many or most of your days in the outdoors, you never know exactly what the world is going to throw at you.
 May you all have the strength to deal with anything you stumble into, and make the toughest decisions with the soundest judgment and kindest intention.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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

Holiday Giveaway

Happy Holidays everybody! Christmas is just days away and the year is almost over, man did it just fly by... I went on fewer long trips this year than I did last, only Florida, which barely counts as Noah and I had already been there a week before the 1st, Central PA for a few days to see Live The Stream the day before Joe's birthday, and Maine, which was just insanity. What happened on those trips and at home between those trips this year though really stands out. I'm proud of what I accomplished, and ready to renew my goals and bear down on those I didn't see through this year in 2020. I'm pleased that I've managed to drag this blog along through what really was a year of declining growth in viewership and make up for it with a few people actually financially supporting this endeavor. It is not a lot but it helps, and I can't thank my patrons enough. Nor any of you that have stuck with me.

If I could I'd send each and every one of you something to show my appreciation, but as small as my audience is that still might put me under... so I'll just have to pick one of you. To enter, comment on this post or, for those that can't comment on blogger, on the Facebook post at the Connecticut Fly Angler page that links to this post. All my patrons, regardless of tier, are each getting one entry whether or not you comment, or two if you do comment. On either the 1st or 2nd of January I'll announce the winner in my year rap-up post which will be titled "2019: The Places, The People, The Fish", so check there and get back to me by email and I will send you your gift. Whoever gets randomly selected will get a Connecticut Fly Angler sticker, 6 sz. 14 Royal Stimulators, and an original water color of an as-of-yet to be decided species of fish. Again, thank you all for helping keep this blog going. I wish you all happy holidays.

Not this one.... a different one.

The Homewater Turnaround

There's a certain point in December when my home water goes from fishing anywhere from pretty mediocre to downright terrible to fishing anywhere from good to "drop everything, it is on fire". That standard has changed over the years there, my favorite stream isn't at all as good as it used to be, but when it gets really good in late December I try to make time whenever I see a good bite window shaping up. The regular 40 fish days are gone but I can still get two dozen with maybe a big one or two in a couple miles of water if I'm on top of my game.

The two big factors determining when a late December bite window is likely are rainfall and air temperature. Both impact shelf ice, and that's the one thing that hampers a good bite most severely. If the fish are under shelf ice, you aren't getting to them. If there isn't shelf ice, if the water is a little stained after a rainfall, and if there have been some great than 40 degree days in the last week, I know I can expect good action. Tightline nymphing is the game and rarely ever is it necessary to use anything other than a Walt's Worm or a BH Hare's Ear Soft Hackle. My near eidetic memory of where each fish I've ever caught in this stream was sitting also keeps me in the game. The population density is low, catching a fish every 20 yards would be incredible, the water is dynamic and the fish spooky so it is all too easy to make a mistake in a critical prime lie and blow the chance. The first drift can be a throwaway but the second better not be, and if you think you can just stand upright right next to a run to fish it you are sorely mistaken. My home water is, on paper, the sort of stream that doesn't demand a very stealthy approach. And yet it is the stream that taught me everything I needed to know about approaching a trout's lie.

On the 16th conditions lined up, and though it was a little bit on the early side, I went knowing I'd likely catch fish. This buttery fellow did not dispute:

I fished three flies this day, two at a time. A sz. 12 Walt's Worm was always on, a sz. 14 Frenchie and sz. 14 BHHESH took turns as the dropper. Here are the tallies:
Walt's: 6
Frenchie: 0
BHHESH: 1
That's a pretty typical distribution on my home water. A large BHHESH on the point would probably ave done about as well as the Walt's though. I can attribute my first 40 trout day to that fly, on this very water in 2011. I could still point out where each significant fish from that day was lying.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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

A Traditional Swamp Fly & The Act of Killing for Food

Perch might be the most reliable fish in the winter in CT. I really enjoy fishing for big fat yellow perch an abundant white perch where they stack up to overwinter. The biomass can be truly spectacular, with fish at times stacked from top to bottom of the water column. There are a variety of reasons why perch will stack up in certain areas in the winter ranging from escaping dirty water to staging to spawn, but whatever the reason, when you find one perch anytime between early December and late March, it is safe to assume there are hundreds more there. But as fun as it is to catch hundreds of perch and as pretty as they are, perhaps the best thing about finding where perch are stacked up in the winter is that they taste really really good. Eating fish is, in my opinion, an important part of fishing. There is no way to avoid killing fish, even if you are completely catch and release, barbless hooks only, never handling fish for a significant length of time... killing is an unavoidable result of the act of fishing. As such, I believe it is important for every angler to hold a beautiful, living fish in their hand and then take its life. Nobody should completely enjoy the act of killing, as being at least a little uncomfortable with it will make a more ethical angler. Killing shouldn't be glorified, the animal should be glorified, in my opinion. But if you just can't bring yourself to kill a fish, you may want to reconsider ever sticking a hook in one again. A lot of my fishing this winter is going to involve killing fish, and though I don't enjoy the process, I'm very proud of the fact that I'm able to provide meat by my own means. There is little better meat in southern New England freshwater than perch.

The fly that has been providing the meat lately is a very interesting pattern that originated in the backwaters of Southern Georgia. That isn't something that can be said of many flies, but it is true of the Okefenokee Swamp Sally. My friend Mark Alpert gave me one after he took a trip down there this fall and I finally put it to use this weekend. It proved very productive. About 70 fish came to hand, four of which met their demise and provided my lunch.

The fly itself is very simple, with a small butt of red chenille, a yellow chenille body, and yellow  hackle wrapped behind the eye then puled back and tied down to form a head of sorts. The Swamp Sally is traditionally fished with a cane pool for warmouth, redear, and fliers, all collectively often called "bream" in the south. They're finding use now here in CT for panfish, and I'm sure would be deadly for brook trout as well.  

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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

Ghosts of Salmon Past

The dark waters of the Shetucket beckon. It is a cold and damp day, but not below freezing, and the falling river has left behind it a margin of snow-free bank. It reminds us that just days before, this river, which is big and powerful enough today, was even more big and even more powerful, and two steps out from the bank would have had a very different result. But today that is safe, and necessary to keep my line out of the reeds when I make my mediocre spey cast. It is deeper than a leak in the right leg of my waders though, and 40 degree water starts soaking through, almost slow enough not to be noticeable. But We've been fishing for a while now and my right foot is damp, I know that leak is there. Stripping line off the reel and shaking the rod tip, I get the whole head off the reel. Fifteen more feet of running line comes off the reel and I make two big loops with it. I'm no good at holding the loops with my hand and casting, so I hold them with my mouth instead. I set the anchor, make the D-loop, then cast. When I let the coils go I've been holding with my mouth they go nowhere in any hurry. The cast falls short and ugly and I swear and quickly two-hand retrieve back in. I want to do this right. Again, but this time accepting that my sink tip was too much for a single spey, I made my go-to spey cast, the Perry Poke. This time the cast flew and the running line slapped tight with a satisfying thunk. In rod and line speak, that says to me "good cast and it could have gone even farther". I mend and let the line drift downstream under no tension to sink some before it starts to swing. My fly, an orange gaudy no-name thing, is presumably riding about four feet below the surface. As it reaches the inside seem of the strongest current tongue, the unmistakable pull of a large fish taking bends the rod. I lift, register three big head shakes, and then the fish is gone. That's how it has been today and that's how it will continue to be. By the end of the trip I'm doubting whether any of the takes, even those that resulted in brief hookups, were actually fish at all. Though these are hatchery raised Atlantic salmon, fish that have never seen the ocean, they still act like salmon for the most part in the river. I've accepted their weirdness for what it is.

For whatever reason, I get the urge to swing traditional salmon flies and two handers this time every year. Maybe its the bombardment of steelhead photos from NY, maybe its simply the comfort swinging flies affords when the water is on the cold side. There's not much of a rhyme or reason for it, this wouldn't be prime salmon time here naturally were they still around. But I find myself on rivers that have no more salmon and rivers with mediocre facsimiles of the real thing, swinging flies for the ghosts of salmon past.  Every now and then, in a river with no salmon in it stocked or otherwise, a big rogue trout will find my fly, maybe even following and boiling after it, sitting in the same sort of water an Atlantic would. I lose myself in those moments, I forget that I'm in Connecticut, fishing a river that is not just a shadow of its former self, but a different and remarkably less healthy river all together. As my good friend Ben Bilello put it, "It's kinda nice living in fantasy land, if only for a moment."

Atlantic salmon are dying. They're dead here. They'll be gone elsewhere in my lifetime. They may well be near extinction if and by the time I have kids old enough to go fishing for wild Atlantics. I've only caught one sea run salmon in my life and it changed me forever. Hopefully it won't be my only. But even if it is, I'll likely spend many more days standing in once great salmon rivers, swinging flies for fish that no longer exist.

Photo Courtesy Bill Platt

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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

Shrimp Eaters and Desperation

Two of the more prolific CT winter coastal fisheries exist in the same waters an rely on the same bait. Resident striped bass, the fishery I am most bored of, and anadromous white perch, the fishery I have figured out least, keep lines tight in the dead of winter in the states tidal rivers. I say I'm most bored of the resident striped bass because I've done it, I've done it, I've done it, I've done it... through the ice, in rivers and backwaters, with spey rod, with a five weight, with 7x tippet, with three fly rigs getting tripled up, I've done it to death. Now I go out of desperation. As much as I love small stream wild trout, this time of year that's about the only remotely consistent thing right around home and it can get old   I thrive on variety and this time of year lacks it. And, more like a broken calendar than a broken clock, this probably isn't the first time you're seeing me write this sort of thing at this very time of year. Noah and I went out of desperation recently. We knew we could count on stripers, we thought we could probably find some perch too. Big white perch have become our nemesis. For years we've hunted for them without success. Many of the traditionally great white perch fisheries seem to be almost dead. Hamburg Cove being the prime example. In recent years the late winter-early spring white perch run in Hamburg has all but petered out. I've not caught a single white perch there, among the yellows that abound in every marina and cove of the Connecticut River at that time of year. Those observations have been mirrored by those that fish there more than I. Precious few white perch get caught there anymore. To add insult to injury, not only can we not seem to find big white perch where others no longer are, Noah and I can't seem to catch big white perch where people still are catching them. Part of this, I'm sure, is out fixation on artificials. If we had used bait all these years we'd probably have caught at least a few. Specifically, if we had used grass shrimp.

Grass shrimp, or Palaemonetes, remain abundant in tidal creeks through the winter months in the Northeast. The species that seems to be most prevalent in Long Island Sound is Palaemonetes pugio. Other baitfish have mostly left: bay anchovies, silversides, and menhaden are no longer available in any significant abundance to predator fish along the coast of CT in the winter months. Atlantic herring, various killifish and sticklebacks, and small white perch do provide a forage base for any larger species that may stick around, but on the whole grass shrimp are what's for dinner. Of course, the resident stripers, if they are feeding, will typically eat just about anything presented to them appropriately. It was a dark, rainy day, after a heavy rain that poured a lot on tannin stained water into the system. Dark day, dark water, dark fly. It seemed to make a difference.

Noah started with a Whip-it Fish then changed to a lighter jig and fluke to get a slower fall rate, And though he caught on both the lighter presentation was more productive. A slow fall rate is not to be underestimated, especially when the fish are moving slow and suspended. In fact this is often a huge advantage a fly angler has over an angler using any other method.

We did try for perch a bit, though our attempts were unfocused and unsuccessful. We'd never tried to acquire grass shrimp for bait before though, and that was very easy with a dip net. I think if we'd had more daylight there'd have been an end to the long losing streak. I'm confident we'll figure it out this winter. I'm sure I've said that before already....
Before I leave you, I'd like to ask a favor. The winter resident striper fishery in CT is very sensitive and heavily exploited. Poaching is rampant and mishandling and poor fighting claim higher numbers of released stripers under their stressed state in the very cold water. Please, if you take part in this fishery, be responsible. Don't go as light as you can with your tackle as tempting as it may be, and yes I have done it in the past and it was very selfish of me. Release the fish quickly, don't take them out of the water if the air temperature is below freezing. Please, please report poaching, whether you think a conservation officer will get there in time or not. Frankly, I wouldn't be heartbroken if January through March were a completely closed season, not just to keeping stripers but to all fishing for them. It's a bad look, the CT holdover fishery. Without some self-regulation, it's going to continue to be that way.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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

First Ice

It got just cold enough for just long enough. The window was tiny, heavy rain and mid 50's temperatures were inbound. But the braze will find ice if they look. I'm not very brave, but I am very light, so I'm comfortable on thinner ice than most should be, though only if it is clear and hard. I found that ice just in time. It was a thing of beauty. Just north of the thickness I'm comfortable with, and so good and pristine and dark. I didn't think that's what I'd find after seeing milky, soft, unsafe ice for days. But there it was. It was time to walk on water.

The fishing wasn't good. A few small bluegills came to hand, two of which were to be sacrificed in the quest for a giant pickerel. Flags did not fly on this day. Nor did the few takes I had on hair jigs result in large crappies for the frying pan. But it was nice to stand on the hardwater again and get into the rhythm of it, if only to have it all melt away in the coming days.

Please be careful out there this ice season.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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

Down Goes December

December is the first of the 4 tougher months in my never ending quest to catch at least one salmonid on a dry fly each month. It isn't the worst, there can be some quite excellent midge hatches in December. January might be the worst. Each of the winter months, I am in a hurry to get a dry fly trout as quickly as possible I have no idea how many opportunities will present themselves, so I've got to put effort in and make the best of each shot I'm given. It took me a few days this month to get the job done, with fishing slowed by melting snow.

It was all textbook, and very much déjà vu. I'd done in many difficult months in the same pool, standing in the same spot, casting the same fly pattern. Never doubt the Ausable Bomber. From the gravel bar, kneeling, I sent a 30 foot cast to the top of the pool. Like a streamer, I stripped the fly back. Even in the dead of winter a big, animated dry fly is liable to pull a fish up. Like a white shark going after a seal, I saw a brookie come up mouth wide open, slowly miss the fly, wake after it with it's dorsal sticking up above the surface, then swirl and make the connection. Winter eats on big dries are interesting, and they don't ever tell the story of how big the fish is. I'd have thought this one was going to be larger, even though the take wasn't dramatic or explosive in any way. A slow, lethargic, winter trout rise can make a small fish seem larger or a large fish seem smaller. In the end, size doesn't matter. This is a wild fish, living where it should, doing what it evolved to do.

There are difficult months ahead in terms of dry fly fishing. Very difficult. But I've done it each month for going on five years now, so I'll just do it again. Though I may through my own wrench in my own gears, if it stops being a challenge and gets repetitive it is no longer worth it.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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

Species Profile: Cutlips Minnow

As most of you hopefully already know, I am a life-list angler. I target, document, and count the number of species, hybrids, and subspecies I catch, specifically on fly tackle. Because of that I spend a lot of time learning about and fishing for many different species of fish. This means I'm more adept at identifying and fishing for an extremely broad range of species than the average fly angler. This series will attempt to outline species identification, some life history, and methods for targeting with fly tackle. Maybe I'll get to every fish on my life list, but considering it is ever growing... it would take a while. Mostly, I hope this will get a few of you interested in going out and learning about or catching something new. 

Cutlips minnows are one of the most unique freshwater fish in North America. It may not appear to be anything out of the ordinary on first glance, as with most small freshwater fish of it's variety if the average angler caught one they'd just call it a minnow or a dace or a chub and call it a day. But if you get to know Exoglossum maxillingua, you realize how weird this little fish is.

The cutlips minnow has a relatively small range, From extreme northern North Carolina up north along the Atlantic Slope to the St. Lawrence, barely edging into western CT, MA, and VT. Introduced non-native populations exist in close proximity to their native range, where they were most likely released from bait buckets. The species prefers clean freestone streams and resides mostly in slow moving pools rather than riffles and fast water. They may also be found in some lakes. At a glance they don't differ that much from creek chubs in appearance, with an olive colored back, white belly, and frequently well defined lateral stripe, and an average size of about 5 inches. They spawn in the spring around the time most other North American cyprinids spawn. Males build small peddle mounds, similar to the spawning behavior of fallfish but on a smaller scale.

The clearest distinguishing trait of the cutlips minnow, and the one it gets its name from, is its lower lip. The lower jaw of the cutlips minnow consists of three lobes, with the middle one protruding out farther. This is an adaptation that has arisen through utilization of very small mollusks and insects as a food source. Cultlips minnows use their lower lip to scrape tiny snails and nymphs off of stream bed rocks. 

But that is not all cutlips utilize their uniquely evolved mouth for. Oh no. Far from it.

They also use it to pry the eyeballs off of other live fish.

That doesn't sound right, does it? How can that possibly be true? Well, it is. When times are tough, cutlips minnows scoop the eyes out of other fish species and sometimes each other and eat them. A such, they are probably not a great choice for a multi species aquarium. Interestingly, a study done by Antonios Pappantoniou of Fordham University found that "camouflage in the form of eyespots and eye lines did act to either confuse or misdirect the eye-picking attacks of the cutlips minnow." 

So, intriguingly, not only can eye like markings on various fish prevent large predator fish from successfully targeting the head of the prey in question, it can confuse the small, eye-eating cutlips minnow. 

"False eye" exemplified by an adult Cichlasoma urophthalmus

If you want to catch a cutlips minnow on the fly, first of all make sure you are fishing where they exist. The methods are pretty simple. Fish small nymphs in clear pools and look for schools of minnows to cast into. When you catch one, take a close look at its lips to verify that it is indeed a cutlips. Then, marvel at the fact that the little minnow you are holding has one of the most wild and bizarre eating habits of any fish. If you choose to admire fish not only for their size, their coloration, or their edibility, but for their incredible diversity of behavior and anatomy, it opens up a whole new world of fishing to you. Fish are a amazing. That, in the end, is what the "species profile" series is all about.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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

Home River Parts Unknown

My home river is the place I learned how to read moving water. It's where I first started lifting rocks and looking at what was living on and under them in terms of fish food. It was the first place I caught a wild trout, then the first place I caught a wild trout over 20 inches. I've gotten to watch my home river change over the eight years or so I've known it, and I've had to deal with some heartbreak on it as much as I have triumph. Though it isn't the closest body of water to where I live, it's where I feel most at home. But of the many fishable miles of my home water, there are stretches I visit very infrequently, and even parts, as much as half of it, that I have never made a cast into at all. On the river I know better than any other, there are still stretches that I don't know at all. Some will stay that way, I have no intention of casting into every pocket or pool or standing on every bit of bank. I believe I owe it to the stream that has given me everything to leave some places untouched. But there are parts of it that I either haven't fished much or haven't fished at all. One of them, above my favorite stretch, I call "The Unknown". It is a messy, tangled stretch of water a mile long, some small parts of it I have fished a time or two, others I haven't even seen. The river's character is different here, the substrate and structure not what is is downstream, nor the forest around it. Whereas below is healthy mixed forest with lots of hemlock and big old oaks, upstream is all hardwoods with dense undergrowth at its thickest right along the stream. Long, flat, deep pools with short runs and pocket water stretches in between also contrast from the water below where the largest pool is more like a big pocket.

The fishing is unquestionably harder here too, in part because the structure both demands long, gentle casts and forbids the angler from actually being able to do that sort of thing. What I really ought to do is bring a light spinning outfit into this stretch of river. Adding to the difficulty is a dramatic lack of fish. There is more insect life and bait fish in The Unknown, and lots of good holding water, but it suffers from being closer to stocking points than the stretch I prefer to fish. My home water really taught me how destructive stocking can be. When I started fishing it I needed to fish no more than half a mile in a day to catch a very solid number of wild fish. When I started fishing it, it hadn't been many years since a fish migration barrier on the lower end had been altered allowing stocked trout from downstream the ability to move up. There were already stocked trout making there way downstream from miles above at three other stocking locations, so now the stream's wonderful wild trout population was getting sandwiched. Since I started fishing here, I've watched the range in which wild brown and brook trout are most abundant shrink and move upstream little by little. Now, starting from where I nearly always do when I fish my home river, I may fish a half a mile of river before I even catch the first wild brown, and the wild brookies are all but completely extirpated. There are undoubtedly some other factors at play, but it's hard to deny that the stocking surpasses the natural biomass, and the stockers, which average a little larger than the wild browns and much bigger than the brookies, put undue strain on the population. And then, being ill adapted to live in the wild, they die either in the summer or the winter. Putting more fish in this river has resulted in fewer trout year round and even fewer trout overtime as anglers are less and less inclined to fish out the stockers from the pools they're dumped in on opening day, letting them take over other parts of the stream until the die. I look back at every stocked trout I've released that I legally could have removed from this stream as a failure on my part to protect the river I care most about. The Unknown has been getting infiltrated by more hatchery trout far longer than the two miles of water below, so it just doesn't yield the same number of wild trout. I can count the number of wild trout I've caught here on one hand. Actually, I can count it with only one finger. And, spoiler alert, my most recent visit did not change that although I managed to avoid skunking.

Despite the low yield, high frustration character of The Unknown, I've become more attracted to it for one specific reason. I've learned over the last few years that in any give river it is the stretches with the fewest wild trout that hold the largest wild trout. Though I haven't encountered another brown over 20 in my home water since Grandfather, if there is anywhere that is likely to be hiding another, it is this overall really unappealing stretch of water. Even if it doesn't hold any big wild trout, I owe it to myself to fish something on my home river that I don't know yet, something I'm not as comfortable with. I'll leave a lot untouched, but I want to know as much as I can. So, though it won't be this winter because the place freezes and there isn't anywhere I'd rather be casting to small stream wild browns in December and January when the conditions are right than the other parts of this stream, when bugs start getting active and chances of find the larger fish rising to paraleps or hendricksons improve, I will be there. I might even be there to catch the fish nobody thought of, where nobody goes.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

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

Some Like it Cold

Most Esox could care less when it starts getting cold. Pike, pickerel, and muskellunge are more tolerant and aggressive in water under 50 degrees than most other predators in the same water bodies. Their maintained vigor in cold water occasionally takes me by surprise despite having caught them with aggressive presentations just about every month of the year. One such day in the dead of winter, a few warm days had melted the edges of the pickerel pond I was fishing, leaving two to five feet of open water before the ice started. I caught fish casting streamers onto the ice and dragging them off the edge. Most fish ate the fly as you'd expect, while it was actually in the water. But a few blasted right through the soft edge ice trying to get the fly before it even had a chance to get into the water. That was pretty cool. The water was just a tiny bit over 32 degrees and these fish were occasionally busting through ice to get at the fly. So, when many other stillwater fish are thumbing their noses at fast retrieves and big flies this time of year, I look to my old friends, the Esox niger, to get my violent predatory behavior fix.

I've had some frustrating and some typical and productive pickerel days lately. The frustrating days were due to lack of action though. Exploring a body of water I haven't fished much at all, I found plenty of willing fish but just didn't have the right tools to get the job done. I'm fairly confident that most of the fish I was getting reactions from were actually redfin pickerel, and though they were large for the species they were small for the flies I had on me, at least all the ones fishing the top three inches of the water column. I had plenty of small flies on me but none that would ride high in the water column at an appropriate retrieve speed. A small gurgler would likely have brought a bunch of fish to hand. Now I know. 

On other days in different waters, it was as easy as it should be. Drunk and Disorderly fished quickly on a floating line, lots of violent very visual eats, a few fish to hand. 

I may well and up going back out in an hour after some larger pickerel before the storm really gets going here. With some much cooler weather inbound, I'm hoping fishable ice comes with it. A decent amount of snow in the northwest corner of the state, which is where the first good ice is pretty much always is, makes things questionable. Time will tell but I can't wait to be walking on the water and jigging for panfish.

Until next time.

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, john, Elizabeth, Chris, Brandon, and Christopher, for supporting this blog on Patreon.