Three New Species, One Real Oddity!

So yeah... that happened this morning. Every once in a while I get weirdly lucky, and this was no exception. I saw a wake in a shallow cut off tide pool, walked up to see what it was, and found the biggest clear nose skate I've ever seen. I put the blue crab fly I had on in front of it, it came over, swam over top of it, and made some weird motions that I interpreted as a take. My first few attempts to set the hook failed, but it gave me a few more chances and eventually the hook found flesh, though it actually pulled out of the mouth and caught the skate's wing. I don't really mind, the fish ate the fly. That counts in my book. 

And that was the first of three new species I caught today. This was one of the best mult-species fly fishing days I've had in ages. Noah added two species to his list as well. We caught a few of the intended target, striped bass, but they were overshadowed by variety and unique situations.

After getting minimal action from the larger stripers we got ourselves over to a jetty to see what weird things we could find. There, dipping stuff in the crevices and holes where sea-bottom fish love to hide, we found bergalls and small tautog. I didn't actually have any saltwater flies small enough for the bergalls, but there was a sz. 10 Stimulator stuck in one of the pockets of my bag that was more than suitable and appetizing after I trimmed the hair off. Some little jig nymphs would have been far more useful though.

For their size all of these fish fight very well, especially the tog on light tackle. They dig down hard and rub the line against the rocks. Noah actually had a few larger tog get off by lodging in the crevices, which they are masters at. It was a really fun morning session, and I'm now a few steps closer to landing that world record tautog... the season opens on the 1st.

We Have it Bad

You know you got it bad when and hour and a half of sleep is enough.
You know you got it bad when it's 3:25 P.M. and the only thing you had too eat so far today was one scone.
You know you got it bad when the lot attendant says "35" and you fork it over without thinking twice. After all, you didn't come all this way not to fish.
You know you got it bad when you're soaked and shivering on a sunny day in late June.
You know you got it bad when you curse out the lot attendants and scream hallelujah when you hook the first striper off of your favorite muscle bar.
You know you got it bad when you wake up at 5:00 P.M. and tell your mother to put the pastrami grinder 3ft out from the shore but not completely submerged so it stays cold. (It really made sense to me until I was dragged quickly out of my slumber by the boiling heat. Then I felt a little bit stupid.)

And you really know you got it bad when you plan to get up at 4:00 the next morning to make another go at it.

"A sight for sore eyes, to the blind, would be awful majestic
It would be the most beautiful thing that they ever had seen" -Wax Fang, "Majestic"

Marauding Thieves

Thinking back, I've lost far more gear to common carp than any other species of fish. One spinning rod, numerous hair and bolt rigs, three fly rods, one entire fly line, a few whole leaders, and more than two boxes worth of flies. Yesterday morning  lost some more gear and caught a few fish. The spawn was in progress, which means there are lots and lots of carp around that simply can't be caught. However, there are often just as many that can be caught. Watching most fish spawn can be very peaceful. Trout, salmon, or char working a redd, sunfish gently swimming around their nests and dancing with their mates, lamprey moving rocks with their mouths.... Carp, on the other hand... I would not want to be a female common carp. The carp spawn can only be described as a violent orgy. It's loud, it stinks, and the water is churned to a froth by tons of large powerful fish. Oftentimes scales and blood are as frequent as fertilized eggs along the rocks.

What never makes sense to me is the number of carp that actually come in behind the spawners to eat their eggs. It is illogical from an evolutionary standpoint. But they seem to be doing fine and are unquestionably doing some damage in certain places because of their prolific nature, and frankly the ones that are egg eating are some of the most fun carp to fish to. I won't argue with their species deprecation tendencies if it means good fishing!

The best fly for me during the spawn, especially for egg eaters, has been a frenchie with a shrimp pink collar. Unfortunately using small frenchies forces me to use extra light tippets, often times 6x and sometimes even 7x when I'm using a sz. 18. So... I had a lot of flies stolen right of the tippet on the first headshake. So many were stolen that my carp box literally ran out of frenchies! At that point I started to juggle other patterns on heavier tippets. That's when I got the first line taker. It was a 10-11 pound male. It ran parralel to the shore and under a dock, then made a hard right turn on the other side. I thought to myself, " I'll just go down and dirty with a shallow rod angle and button down and stop him like I did with that 34 inch striper earlier this spring". I could feel the line slipping along one of the smooth poles on the dock and see the fish making ridiculous short runs on the other side. I buttoned down, turned the rod, and the fish beat the piss out of me. The line dug into my finger and the reel handle rapped my knuckles. I had the drag so tight if I had the rod at a high angle it would have exploded to bits. Since it was a low angle, my 1x tippet exploded. 

More stuff stolen by the marauding carp.

Eventually I stuck one and it wasn't a thief. 

That fish fell to a dragonfly nymph; the next one, a little bit bigger and a lot harder fighting, took a carp carrot. Both takes were the clear, demonstrative, almost aggressive kind. The second one gave me a battle I won't soon forget, but I'd rather keep the details to myself. 

Home Water Quickie

Yesterday I made a visit to my home water, which was in great shape for this time of year. The flows were medium and cold. The only issues I could see were 1: there were not enough leaves on the trees due to the gypsy moth infestation, and 2: there are not enough fish. There are a lot of streams that survived the drought like it was nothing. This one did not. It took a massive hit. I caught four small wild brown trout and only missed a handful of hits on a stretch of water that used to produce 10 or more fish over 6 inches and as many missed takes. Given the 6 visits to this stream since the start of the year and my in depth knowledge of it and the fish population, I'd say there has been a 60% decrease in brown trout and a 90% decrease in brook trout since spring of 2015. The average size has dropped from 10 inches in 2013 to 6 inches in 2016 and 2017. Of course it could easily come back to what it used to be if we get three or four wet cold summers, but what are the chances of that? Trends have been the opposite. I'll keep fishing it, and like I did this winter when I spent days hiking and killing gypsy moth egg masses, I'll keep taking better care of it than the rest of the community seems to.

The highlight of the day was this beautiful brown that slammed a skated stimulator and did several big leaps. I love it when they go airborne!

I caught some brook trout too, but they were from a different stream in the area. Like the water they came from they were very dark. 

My last catch of the day was the sweetest water snake I've ever caught. She had numerous chances to bite me, but she never did. Maybe it was because she was just about ready to shed, or maybe I've caught her before and she recognized me... whatever the case it took me no time at all to get her calm and comfortable with getting handled. Usually with northern water snakes I have to let them strike me a couple times to get them to relax, or mash their neck like too many people do when snake handling, but this girl didn't even lash out once. Oh, and in case you are wondering I'm not good at sexing snakes so I could easily be calling a he a she here... I have no clue. I always forget to look.

Timber Rattlesnakes and Striped Bass

I am and always have been an amphibian and reptile lover. I love all kinds, but pit vipers hold a special place. They are extremely impressive snakes. Their bodies are massive compared to their length and very muscular, almost always covered with beautiful patterns. In New England we only have two species of viper, copperheads and timber rattlesnakes. Neither are particularly common, but timber rattlesnakes are even less common and are a state endangered species. These snakes have very slow reproductive rates and tend to spend much of their time in groups. In the winter they gather in "dens", and during the warmer months they don't seem to go very far from those areas. Where you find one there are often others. This made it easy for some of the most atrocious acts against nature by man kind to be committed. There was a time when townships had bounties for timber rattlers, and even aside from development and deforestation that persecution had a huge impact on the population. Basically, a bunch of uninformed hicks with pitchforks and torches killed nearly harmless snakes because of baseless fears. Typical human destruction of nature.

Fortunately the mass killings were not completely successful and there are still a handful of timber rattlesnakes dens left in CT. A few yeas ago I was lucky enough to see my first timber rattler in a big pile of glacial erratics somewhere in the CT woods. So, yesterday, I went out searching for a rare venomous snake that is more placid and calm than any water snake or racer you will ever see. And I found them. Every time I get to see a viper of any kind I get an initial fear that waves over me, leftovers from a time when humans were walking the earth barefoot and seeing one of these bulky, diamond headed, rattle tailed animals meant danger. But that feeling doesn't last long. It is replaced very quickly with pure awe. These truly are beautiful creatures and if you are lucky enough to have seen one, that's a real blessing. If you hate snakes, kindly leave these alone. Don't dare kill one. If you do, and I see it happen.

Run.

Find all 4!

One by one, the three snakes that were out in the open calmly and slowly departed, two of them rattling as they went, The dark phase one was the last to go, and he struck a great pose right before he did. It was an amazing thing to see 4 of these gems in one little cluster, all in totally different color phases. They didn't pose any threat to us, and we let them do their thing.


In the evening Dan and I went out to enjoy nature some more. The weather was weird, the fishing was weird, and it was great. Beautiful sunset... but we all know what that means.

(Photo Courtesy Dan Klune) 

Nature is amazing. Get out and enjoy it, whether you are fishing or not.