Muddy Creek, York County, 02-21-2009

[salmonoid]

First time fishing this creek. Parked at the very bottom of the FFO section and fished upstream to about the mid point of the FFO section, at the first major bend in the stream. Weather was mostly sunny, although most stretches of the stream I was in were in shade. Air temp was in high 30's only, a little ice along the banks, and the shade of wind that was blowing made for some icy fingers after releasing fish 🙂 Fished from about 3PM to 5:30PM.

Since this was my first time fishing this creek, I didn't know exactly what to expect, but I returned with some good numbers - about 24 fish caught, all browns. A few of them sure looked wild, although maybe the state is creating more "natural" brown stockers, with advanced yellow fin coloring. Size range from 8" to 14"; did not see any hawgs like showed up in some of the local streams last year, but did talk to one gentleman who had a larger fish on and lost it.

Fished with a bead head microbugger; first one was olive, and it succumbed to the 14th fish, so I switched over to a black bead head microbugger. I've been tying these an alternative to a full blown wooly bugger, because I seem to be able to cast the smaller ones better. I wouldn't consider it a secret, because it's a common tying material, but I've substituted about seven strands of peacock herl in place of the chenile, and these things have been highly effective for me.

Some of the fish did aggressively strike; some hit at the very end of a retrieve and some just lipped the fly. I believe I discovered that I use too much material on my fly, as I had an abnormally high number of fish get off, and I think with the smaller hook and lots of tying material, I wasn't getting a good hook set and the fish were getting mostly material.

Was supposed to go with a friend today but he couldn't make it, but we'll be back at a later date for sure.

 

[Woolybugger]

24 trout in a couple hours! Way to go.
I wonder if that section was just restocked recently?

 

[salmonoid]

Woolybugger wrote:
24 trout in a couple hours! Way to go.
I wonder if that section was just restocked recently?

02-17-2009, according to the PFBC stocking schedule.

 

[Maurice]

Volunteers from MCTU floated 600 from the top to about halfway in your journey and bucketed another 200 in the area you fished.

All the fish were black as coal on top. Very little coloration. Any fish you caught with color were either held over from the spring of last year or wild.

There were only a few larger browns in the batch.

Tomorrow we are going down there to spread the stone in the lower parking area.

It is my experience that freshly stocked trout are terrible at hitting a moving fly like a bugger, they are just not experienced at the task. Thanks for warming them up for us. :-D

 

[JakesLeakyWaders]

I had the same problem losing some trout there in the fall. I think I made my buggers to thick with too much lead and too much material. I remember looking at my tied buggers and thinking that they needed more hook gap. Mostly the bows were teasing me with the buggers but I landed almost all of the browns. I'm ready to get back out. The weather has been unforgiving this winter and I haven't gotten out as much as I thought I would. My job is getting in the way of my hobbies as well, although I am fortunate to have a job the way things are going this last year with businesses. Oh well, if worst comes to worst I just shot my first wedding saturday and maybe I could quit my day job and shoot weddings on weekends. Then I would have all week to fish.