RB Young Woman's Creek, Clinton County, 5/13/11

[Twofly]

I was up this weekend opening up camp for the season and fished one of my favorite creeks Young Womans. The creeks in the Potter/Clinton area are in great shape but it was dreary and rainy with the temperatures in the high 50's and low 60's most of the day. I still have the sound in my head of the constant pitter/patter of rain hitting my rain jacket.

I started off fishing my default method ,nymph under indicator fishing up-stream. The first good riffle produced 2 native brookies. one 10" and the other around 5" and I thought this might be a good day, but over the next 3hours nada. Cold/soggy I wondered what the "f" am I doing out in this weather. I started back downstream for the car. I remembered I had tied up a few new streamer patterns "Becks super buggers". I tied on about a 2.5' section of 4x tippet to my butt section with an indicator about 3' from the fly. I started back downstream drifting down and across with short strips across near the end of the drift. The action really started. Every hole or deeper run yielded 2 or 3 fish. About 1/2 the fish where native brookies including a nice 12"er and a 10". The other 1/2 where the stocked rainbows in the 12"-15"class. The hits from the native brookies were vicious, they hammered the fly and fought with so much more power and gusto than their larger hatchery cousins. The rainbows fought very lethargically. I will say that the rainbows looked amazing, they didnt look like your typically pasty hatchery stock. If you didnt know better you would swear they are wild.

 

[TYoung]

What part of the creek were you fishing? They stock the upper and lower part of the creek with brookies. With the number and size of the brookies you caught, I wonder if some of them were stocked.

 

[Twofly]

T Young,

I was in the lower to middle of the catch and release area.
The brookies were all wild. I have caught stocked brookies in Young Womans before but these all were most definately natives. I snapped a couple of pics I will try to post them tonight. I had a really nice size hot fish on that I lost that I think was a brookie but I couldnt say for sure. The discourging thing is that I didnt catch one brown. I think the rainbows have crowded them out. I hate the rainbows but I still love the creek. I remember not to long ago some great days catching a good mix of both wild brooks and browns.

 

[TYoung]

It's great knews that there are wild brookies that far down stream. These days, most streams only have brookies in there head waters.

 

[Van_Cleaver]

I fished there (C+R section) for the first time in years last season, on a high water day. Caught a mix of streambred brookies, and stockers. The largest wild brookie was just over 10''. There were a fair no. of browns in the mix too, but maybe the off color water was just making them a little less wary than usual. Most of the browns were in the middle and lower reaches. I was on my way out from a three day trip, and it was a great way to wrap things up, if you discout the fact that I stayed way too long prior to my four hour drive home. Just one more fish..........