The Year the Sand Eels Returned

Sand lances or sand eels, were a staple baitfish in Long Island Sound for many years. By the time I was regularly fishing for striped bass, they were rare enough that it took three years before I encountered bass feeding on them and it wasn't until this year that I actually had to fish imitations of them to deceive fish very specifically keyed on sand eels. This year has been an odd one in Long Island Sound, not like any other year I've fished, and it seemed for a while to be the year the sand eels returned.

One grey morning in late June I stepped onto the sand of one of my favorite flats and looked out over The Sound, unable to see the horizon as the glass calm water blended with the foggy grey sky. When a handful of sand eels spooked out of the bottom of a shallow pool, I knew this would be a good morning. I'd never seen as much as a single one here in the past.

As I walked further still, I saw something else peeking its head out of the sand, a fish of catchable size, and clearly a species I'd never caught. I had a bonefish fly on, and though it wasn't really small enough I had nothing better. I dropped it in front of the fish and it left the sand and ate aggressively. It was much too large to fit in the mystery fish's mouth, but I still managed to hook it and bring it to hand... not that there was much fight on the 10wt.

It would be a little while before I identified this fish. Leo Sheng identified it, actually.

Life List Fish #165, Striped cusk-eel. Ophidion marginatum. Rank: species.

 I hadn't even gotten my ankles wet and I'd seen some sand eels and caught a new species. When I did get out into the water it was quickly apparent that there were large schools of sand eels and that both striped bass and sea robbins were feeding on them. I tied on a simple, slim, Surf Candy style fly and waited to see a wake, pop, boil, or tail.
The first fish I caught was a sea robin. This was no surprise, they are pushovers.

It took me a little while to realize that, though I was only in a foot and a half of water, the stripers were behind me. The were working the bar edges, rooting out sand eels. Though I wanted to look out into deeper water, I was going to need to turn around to catch these bass.

They were very finicky, as most stripers feeding in just inches of water are. I was getting more follows than I was committed takes. In fact I wasn't really getting any takes at all, until I started to let the fly fall and slowed my retrieve. The I managed to pick up a few fish. They were small, but it isn't just about size... it's about the conditions. I don't care what size the fish are, stripers working extremely shallow water, feeding selectively, and demanding a precise presentation is extremely engaging fishing.

After a while the visible bass activity dissipated, so I tied on a Gurgler and attempted to get a topwater sea robin... it didn't take long. Mission success. I left happy.

That was the last time I saw sand eels there so far this year. I kept seeing them in other areas until water temperature climbed too high.
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. 

Summertime Suckers

Only two members of the Catostomus genus have been recorded in Connecticut. One, the longnose sucker, is a species of special concern, having been documented in only one stream on the border with Massachusetts, and some attempts to locate the species again there have not succeeded. There are no redhorse in Connecticut. What we have are white suckers, and a lot of them. Their abundance bears no relationship to the ease with which the can be caught on the fly though. People nymphing for trout frequently often pick up the odd white sucker in early spring when they make their spawning run, and that is also the best time to target the species. In the summer and fall though they are often very hard to come by. They can be found, sure. They are everywhere. But they can't always be caught on the fly easily. So I was pretty excited one day in late June when I happened upon a stretch of creek loaded with suckers, many of them actively mudding.

Mudding white suckers are the hardest to catch mudding fish I've ever targeted. Mudding carp, bullheads, catfish, redfish, and largemouth bass have all proven to result in a greater take to presentation ratio than mudding suckers in my experience. Luckily, in this case, there was an abnormally large school of feeding white suckers that seemed to have thrown caution to the wind. I made my first presentation and missed a take, and that fish spooked, as well as the one immediately next to it, but the rest of the school payed no mind to the disturbance. I tried again, letting my Ausable Ugly settle on the bottom, then carefully sliding it it by bit into the feeding lane of the closest fish. It made a hard move to the fly and ate with clear intent. I hooked up, fought the fish, landed it, photographed it, then moved back into position and was amazed to see a number of suckers still there, feeding heavily.

Catostomus commersonii

I made my attempt at the closest fish, and again, it ate, but this time the fight didn't last more than about five seconds before the fish popped off. No matter... there were still some feeding. The next one wasn't so lucky.

It's these chance opportunities that keep fishing interesting to me, and since fish are creatures of habit they often repeat the same behaviors at the same times of year under similar conditions... so a chance opportunity often turns into a long standing pattern if I pay enough attention. Whether I'll successfully pattern this particular sucker bite, or if it's really that repeatable, I have no clue. But I can certainly try to pattern it if I decide to.
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. 

Dinosaurs

I peered into the only open hole in a thickly weeded pond one early summer afternoon hoping to see the torpedo like form and of a bowfin. In fact I saw many in that clear hole, made by a PVC pipe leading between the pond and a river, the same pipe these bowfin had used to infiltrate the pond. These fish were not present in Connecticut until fairly recently. Though the means of introduction was not natural, there is little doubt that bowfin would have ended up here eventually anyway. Fish travel, and ecology changes with the climate. Connecticut has a plethora of water in which bowfin could and probably will thrive, and though I advocate for native fish primarily, I'm not sure bowfin being here is a bad thing.

I dropped a simple, small, buggy streamer in front of one of the fish visible in front of me. It engaged quickly, its dorsal fin began undulating. I braced myself as the fish unloaded on the fly with aggression entirely contrary to its prior sedentary appearance. I jammed the hook home hard, needing to use a lot of force to penetrate the bowfin's bony jaw. The water erupted and all the other fish spooked off, and I jumped out of the bushes and into the pond. The battle was a close-quarters one, with neither side willing to give and inch. Of course I had the advantage and this wasn't my first rodeo. I landed my first Connecticut bowfin of the year, albeit a month or two later than I'd have preferred.

Amia calva

I let him go and looked around... everyone else had gone and hid.

The next day I decided to return. On initial inspection the pipe hole was  devoid of bowfin. I quietly eased into the water for a better look. On closer inspection, I spotted a bowfin lying motionless in the weeds. I repeated the previous day's success almost verbatim. Another violent battle won, another living dinosaur to hand, with a variation of Drew Price's Mr. Bow-regard in his mouth.

These amazing fish may be some of the last standing in places most severely impacted by the Anthropocene. They are much maligned, but that, as is so often the case, is out of ignorance. I adore these fish, and I can't wait to catch the next one.
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. 

Bricks, Heroin, and Smallmouth Bass

There's something about urban fishing that I love. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, as I'd tell most people I love the wilderness, and being as far from other people as possible is a priority. Yet, I get a special sort of pleasure from pulling a brown trout out from behind a shopping cart, or sight casting a carp in a concrete lined canal. As such, I was perfectly comfortable walking the streets of a Massachusetts mill town with Noah and our other friend, also named Noah, fishing the sort of places where a fly rod is viewed by passers by as about as out of place as would be a man riding a camel.

We were looking for carp, but things were a little off and we weren't finding them with any regularity. We covered ground, searching those large cyprinids, but found some remarkably colored sunfishes instead.

Lepomis gibbosus

 The redbreast sunfish below is unquestionably one of the prettiest fish I have ever caught. Funny, the lowly sunfish family is responsible for some of the most visually stunning fish specimens I've laid eyes on. This natural painting was in striking contrast to the environment it was living in.

Lepomis auritus

Lepomis auritus x Lepomis macrochirus

Soon the pattern became clear, this was going to be a bass and panfish day, not a carp day. We followed an arm of the canal down to a river, and walked the walls down river looking for a way down onto the banks so we could fish what looked like some fantastic smallmouth water. Next to a homeless encampment, we found a way down. And indeed it was fantastic smallmouth water. 

Unexpectedly it was also good crappie water, some of the best I'd ever fished. We found a couple pockets of slab crappies, a few of them even worth measuring. For a little while I was on a roll, landing slab crappie after slab crappie, the biggest being a hair over 14 inches. They were fighting pretty hard for crappies too, and I've caught black crappies over 16 inches so I've got a bit of experience in the slab department. These were impressive fish. 

Though the bass we were catching weren't "slabs" really, they weren't bad in average size. I'm used to stream smallmouth averaging eight inches. We've got some good ones in some of the rivers near where I live, but often to get quantity you have to sacrifice quality and vice versa. This was more on par with the Housatonic summer smallmouth fishery, if not a little better. Stripping a woolly bugger or twitching a jig through shadow lines, pool tailouts, back eddies, and pockets produced strike after strike. My favorite catch wasn't even the biggest, it was a bass of about 11 inches in a hard to reach back eddy. I had to wade into risky territory to make my cast and hold the rod high to get any sort of a drift. And the drift I got wasn't long but it was long enough, my fly got hammered. The fish proceeded to dive straight into the fast water and bounce from rock to rock, forcing me to really work to land him. Anyone that fishes moving water smallmouth knows, these fish have heart. 

We worked our way back downstream to where we'd entered but continued to catch fish it that water we'd already covered. In fact we got into some of the fastest action right where we'd gotten down to the river, near the raccoon carcass and the heroi... er... "insulin" needles.

Like I said, there's something about urban fishing... I don't quite know what. Perhaps its the juxtaposition. Those stunning redbreast sunfish, giant crappies, and powerful smallmouth bass, living in the shadow of mills and homeless camps, next to heroin needles and shopping carts. It's interesting. And a little sketchy at times. But the luster, if you could call it that, has never diminished. I'm forever a grunge city fisherman as much as I am a wilderness angler.

There was a raccoon peeking out of there before I got the camera out.

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. 

When it Rains in The Catskills

It had been a few years since the cool waters of the Beaverkill last swirled around my legs. The Catskills call each spring, just as the herring run tapers off at home, but I had failed the heed for a couple seasons. I was here now a little later than I'd like, on June 10th, and at first it was looking rather bleak. The water was low and there weren't many bugs on the water.

At sunset, the switch was flipped and I started to see heads. Lot of heads, and some big ones. As one rose, engulfed my caddis, then turned back down, a big grin came across my face. This was what it was all about. A constant flow of chunky brown trout came to hand until it was too dark to see my flies any more.

 

As dusk faded to darkness and the hatch dissipated, I took a seat on a rock and allowed some time for the fish to adjust to the next feeding pattern. I'd not gotten to properly night fish on any of my previous Catskill's trips. It was with serious anticipation that I tied a new, stout leader on. Two flies, a Muddler and a large Harvey's Pusher, would be the work horses tonight. Finished rigging, I stood slowly and walked to the head of the pool to start my first pass. Slowly and methodically, the Muddler and Pusher were worked twice over through each foot of likely water. It wasn't many casts before there came a bump, and not many after that when a fish took hard and was hooked. It was another chunky holdover brown like those I'd been catching on dries.

The first pass of the pool produced a steady pick of typical fish, mid sized hatchery fish and small wild browns. The second pass produced nothing until I was greeted by a violent pull. I raised the rod and was on, but only briefly. "Damn, huge fish." I muttered under my breath. It had taken in less than a foot of water, roughly slow walking pace flow...classic night time big trout water. Two casts later I was on. It was a nice fish, and fighting incredibly hard, but it clearly wasn't what the last one was. A high teens wild brown trout, however, using my favorite methods, was more than enough to satiate my long standing Catskills night fishing need.

It then started to rain. It never stopped until well after sunrise. Knowing what was inevitable, I decided the best course of action was to head to the West Branch. There, however, a thick bank of fog hindered any chance of a good bite.

I wasted too much time there, and back on the Beaverkill I'd have but a brief window for a good streamer bite in the rising water. As the water got muddier and muddier and rose at a blistering pace, I worked the soft pockets and clearer water at tributary mouths. This can produce quality fish... it was not unsuccessful this time around. A gorgeous wild brown slammed my streamer just under the surface in the pocket behind a large boulder.

As the water continued to rise it became increasingly difficult to find willing fish. I sneaked out one more colorful holdover before things became essentially un-fishable. It didn't seem to matter either, I went back to the West Branch, I went to the East Branch... same story. Chocolate milk. 

 The writing was on the wall, so I did what anyone would do when the fishing sucks... I went looking for snakes. Did I say anyone? I'm sorry, I meant "very few people"... I'm not the only one, Tim Borski or Frank Smethurst among others might well do the same thing in the same situation. Unfortunately, it was now the hottest part of the day and even the snakes under slabs of shale in the talus slides I was flipping were charged up and quick to dive into the rocks and out of my reach. The largest milk snake I've ever seen was among a number of snakes I'd have like to have photographed that evaded my capture. A couple garters and ringnecks weren't enough to hold my attention as the sun became too much.

My time in the Catskills was now limited. I'd spent plans A, B, C, and D. I looked at the map and wondered. Maybe the Neversink would be fishable?

Let's just say it was. And let's say I fell in love. And I'll tell you I'll be back to that river. Some rivers and I speak the same language, and the Neversink is one of them.

A lot might happen when it rains in the Catskills. You could catch the biggest brown trout of your life. You could get stuck waiting for the deluge to end under a bridge. Or you could have to change watersheds entirely and discover a new favorite river. I love when it rains in the Catskills.
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. 

Splash Down

We found a rope swing next to the river. It was just begging to be used. Neither Noah nor I could consistently pull ourselves high enough up the rope to keep from hitting the water on the down swing. But that wonderful feeling of plunging down into the river and letting the cold water rush over reminded me that I'm still a kid, and probably always be. I just keep doing things that make me smile with people that make me smile... and learning. I never want to stop.

Sometimes learning is more like-relearning. I can't tell you how many lessons I've learned that have needed hammered home once more. One is never ignore shallow water if there's cover and the speed of the flow is right. We were out on a mid sized bass river or large trout river depending on your perspective, and we were catching a few but the size was lacking Noah had hooked and lost a very large fish, species unknown, and I'd gotten into a surprisingly loaded pocket of rainbows. We weren't after trout, and after a bit it got almost annoying how many we were catching compared to the two species we were after; smallmouth and fallfish. As a waded down through a wide riffle, I glanced at an overhanging tree on river left where a bit of water dumped off a gravel bar and hit the bank, making a pocket maybe only a foot deep, but shaded and with just the right sort of riffle on the surface. This was the kind of bit of subtle lie a lot of fisherman walk past, but it was also a classic big trout lie. I ignored it, thinking these little stocked rainbows weren't worth my walking over there just to catch one, maybe two more of. And it wasn't a good smallmouth lie. So I passed it by. Noah and I got some bass down river, as well as his biggest fallfish and some more rainbows. But on the way back up, I looked back over at that same pocket under the tree and reminded myself to be smart. "Don't pass up that spot, it's perfect. There will be a fish in there." It would be a sneaky cast and short drift, and I likely wouldn't feel a take but would have to set on intuition alone. Knowing how my fly sinks in different current speeds and types of flow in addition to where fish are likely to hold has allowed me to catch fish that I would never have seen or felt take. This isn't something I learned on my own, Joe Humphreys in particular planted the seeds. But my many hours on the water and my ability to observe and read and feel the way my presentation fishes is certainly a huge player. I try to be a student of the water.

I waded onto the gravel bar just above the end of the hanging try and made a tuck cast into the rough water at the top of the pocket. I let my fly fall for 3 seconds after splash down, then set the hook. I was right, I'd felt nothing at all, but my rod buckled over as a big rainbow broke the surface. She'd been right where I thought she'd be and she ate first drift as soon as the fly got down. Now I had to keep her out of the overhanging brush. Frankly, it wasn't hard. My tippet was 2x, and I wasn't afraid to put the cork to this fish. She tried, she ran pretty hard and jumped a few more times, but I had the upper hand.

Even though we caught a ton of fish that day, including some nice river smallmouth on top later that evening, that rainbow reminded me of a couple important lessons that I'd let slip. Never skip those subtle shallow pockets, keep the fly in fishy water as much as you can throughout the day, and set impulsively. I'll never be as good a fisherman as I want to be, but the more I think and observe, the more I remind myself of lessons past, the better I'll be. Ironically it's the way I did things as a little kid: full immersion. I . I've changed it a lot of ways but I doubt I'll ever lose that.
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.