PSUFishMenace
Member
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2009
- Messages
- 733
This summer I am retaking calc 2 because I didn’t do so well in the spring. Tuesday in class the professor returned our first exam: I aced it! I think I finally understand that stuff, and the score I got reflected a huge breakthrough for me. But that was not the only breakthrough I had Tuesday.
The second breakthrough came on a tiny brookie stream that I decided to hit up when I got home late in the afternoon. I know I am not the only board member who fishes this stream, last year someone posted about it without revealing the location so I will do the same. I happened to stumble upon it a few months later and recognized it from the pictures. The post gave me the impression that it was a pretty special stream so I was a bit confused when my first trip turned up only three average-sized natives in a long stretch of water. I wrote it off as mainly a chub stream and did not return until a few weeks ago.
On that trip a few weeks ago, I managed 5 brookies, the largest was 7”. I was still unimpressed with the size of the fish and the stream but I did see a lot more trout than I had initially believed were there. The next day I went back to explore upstream further, no luck there but I did pull two nice ones out of a pool that I thought only held chubs. Hmmmm…
Tuesday I got to the stream around 5:30. This time, instead of hiking my way downstream and fishing back up, I decided to do the opposite. That way I could use the current to hold my fly in the tiny pockets where the trout are instead of having it race by them before they can react. I still had a brown foam ant tied on from my last brookie adventure and decided to stick with it.
I crept up to the first and largest pool (first picture) and flicked the ant into an eddy next to where the main current enters. Immediately a small fish missed, either a fingerling or a chub, I stripped it slowly and just before it reached the edge of the pool, a very nice brookie shot out and snatched it. It was just over 7”, the largest I have caught from this creek. I took a quick pic, let it go and flicked the ant back into the same spot. I missed another one on three consecutive casts before I gave up on it. Now I made a cast to the rocky outside bend of the pool and BAM another brookie, this one was a bit smaller. I was off to a fast start.
I didn’t get any more strikes in that pool but I saw at least four other trout in it as I walked by to continue downstream. I caught a 6” brookie in each of the next two pockets (third pic). Three pools, four trout. The stream was on fire and it didn’t stop there. By the time I left at 8 pm I had landed a total of 14 brookies, and missed plenty more. The first one ended up being the biggest of the day, and I also caught my smallest brookie ever (last pic and my avatar lol). I saw a good amount of large yellow mayflies in the air and maybe on a larger stream the fish would have keyed in on them. But twitching my foam ant across the pockets and slowly back upstream along the edge of the current seemed to make trout materialize from every pocket deeper than a few inches. A few casts in each pocket and they would inevitably demolish it. I learned a lot about getting a good hookset yesterday, most importantly, don’t try to set when the line-to-leader knot is two inches away from the top guide. When you strip or lift to set and that knot gets stuck it momentarily stops your hookset.
I also noticed the trout in this stream are a bit odd-looking. They have the orange bellies (which did not show up well on camera) but many of the ones I caught had hardly any vermiculations (squiggly markings) on the back. Maybe it is because they were smaller than what I catch in other streams, but their backs were just very dark green on top with just a narrow strip of squiggly lines above the normal spot pattern. I think it’s fascinating how the patterns can vary from stream to stream. Another stream has brookies that commonly lack yellow/orange on the belly and a different stream produces a number of brookies with no red spots.
I know it’s a cliché but Tuesday was a lesson in not judging a book by its cover. That goes for math and trout streams. I didn’t give up on the stream after my first (and second, and third) mediocre outing, tried something different, and was rewarded with the most trout I have ever caught flyfishing and twice as many as my best trip in the past 10 months. It took me a few tries, but I finally realize why this stream is so special.
The second breakthrough came on a tiny brookie stream that I decided to hit up when I got home late in the afternoon. I know I am not the only board member who fishes this stream, last year someone posted about it without revealing the location so I will do the same. I happened to stumble upon it a few months later and recognized it from the pictures. The post gave me the impression that it was a pretty special stream so I was a bit confused when my first trip turned up only three average-sized natives in a long stretch of water. I wrote it off as mainly a chub stream and did not return until a few weeks ago.
On that trip a few weeks ago, I managed 5 brookies, the largest was 7”. I was still unimpressed with the size of the fish and the stream but I did see a lot more trout than I had initially believed were there. The next day I went back to explore upstream further, no luck there but I did pull two nice ones out of a pool that I thought only held chubs. Hmmmm…
Tuesday I got to the stream around 5:30. This time, instead of hiking my way downstream and fishing back up, I decided to do the opposite. That way I could use the current to hold my fly in the tiny pockets where the trout are instead of having it race by them before they can react. I still had a brown foam ant tied on from my last brookie adventure and decided to stick with it.
I crept up to the first and largest pool (first picture) and flicked the ant into an eddy next to where the main current enters. Immediately a small fish missed, either a fingerling or a chub, I stripped it slowly and just before it reached the edge of the pool, a very nice brookie shot out and snatched it. It was just over 7”, the largest I have caught from this creek. I took a quick pic, let it go and flicked the ant back into the same spot. I missed another one on three consecutive casts before I gave up on it. Now I made a cast to the rocky outside bend of the pool and BAM another brookie, this one was a bit smaller. I was off to a fast start.
I didn’t get any more strikes in that pool but I saw at least four other trout in it as I walked by to continue downstream. I caught a 6” brookie in each of the next two pockets (third pic). Three pools, four trout. The stream was on fire and it didn’t stop there. By the time I left at 8 pm I had landed a total of 14 brookies, and missed plenty more. The first one ended up being the biggest of the day, and I also caught my smallest brookie ever (last pic and my avatar lol). I saw a good amount of large yellow mayflies in the air and maybe on a larger stream the fish would have keyed in on them. But twitching my foam ant across the pockets and slowly back upstream along the edge of the current seemed to make trout materialize from every pocket deeper than a few inches. A few casts in each pocket and they would inevitably demolish it. I learned a lot about getting a good hookset yesterday, most importantly, don’t try to set when the line-to-leader knot is two inches away from the top guide. When you strip or lift to set and that knot gets stuck it momentarily stops your hookset.
I also noticed the trout in this stream are a bit odd-looking. They have the orange bellies (which did not show up well on camera) but many of the ones I caught had hardly any vermiculations (squiggly markings) on the back. Maybe it is because they were smaller than what I catch in other streams, but their backs were just very dark green on top with just a narrow strip of squiggly lines above the normal spot pattern. I think it’s fascinating how the patterns can vary from stream to stream. Another stream has brookies that commonly lack yellow/orange on the belly and a different stream produces a number of brookies with no red spots.
I know it’s a cliché but Tuesday was a lesson in not judging a book by its cover. That goes for math and trout streams. I didn’t give up on the stream after my first (and second, and third) mediocre outing, tried something different, and was rewarded with the most trout I have ever caught flyfishing and twice as many as my best trip in the past 10 months. It took me a few tries, but I finally realize why this stream is so special.
