Tionesta Creek, ___ Co., 4/17-18/2010

[pcray1231]

Saturday: Me, my dad, my brother, and a friend of his in camp for trout season. This is my seasonal bait foray, though maybe half the time I used various flies (esp. egg patterns) on the spinning rod. Spit snow all day, had a dusting on the ridges by nightfall. Low water, more crowded than usual too. Weird first day, the fish hadn't moved at all from the stocking. In one case, they had stocked in a riffle, and there's a series of holes downstream of there, and we always did well in those holes. Not this year, but right in that riffle there was a pack of 150 or so with their backs out of the water. If you were in the right spot, you cleaned up, otherwise you got nothing!

Total for the 4 of us was 40 trout (37 rainbows, 2 brookie, 1 brown), 4 smallmouth bass (the smallest of which was 16"), 1 small largemouth, 1 yellow perch, 1 muskie (17" maybe), 1 sucker, and a hellbender of maybe 20" was brought to my dad's feet before it got off (it hit a minnow).

My brother, though, accounted for the vast majority of that total, including 30 of the 40 trout and everything else except the hellbender and 1 smallmouth. He's the one that discovered the mass of fish in the riffle, and its really a one person spot. I may have even gotten the skunk. I had 3 or 4 to my feet, but all were long line releases which I did not count, but it could be argued they were catches.

Sunday: Woke up to a half inch of snow on the ridges, nothing in the valleys though. My brother and his buddy took off, did not fish. My dad and I fished an hour, but we had to be back at camp by 8:30 or so to leave ourselves. Basically we beat everyone else to the mass of fish (who watched my brother clean up on Sat.), yanked a few out and went home. In that hour, I had caught 5 and musta lost 10 more, my dad did similar.

We did not see a single fish creeled on either day...

 

[wgmiller]

So much for 'brotherly love'...sheesh! :-D

 

[troutbert]

pcray1231 wrote:

4 smallmouth bass (the smallest of which was 16")

How big were the larger ones? It sounds like a serious smallmouth stream into which, BTW, some hatchery trout are also stocked.

 

[pcray1231]

Troutbert, the biggest was probably a hair under 20". It is an excellent smallmouth fishery, though compared with the excellent smallmouth fisheries in the region (Allegheny, Oil, Brokenstraw, Clarion, etc.), it kind of loses its luster. Rarely, though, do we ever catch smallies in the early season on this stream, you usually start catching one or two in May and then they really turn on in June. The trout meanwhile, are really fading by late May, and virtually gone by mid-June. These smallies (and all the non-trout, actually), were caught from the same pool, which is a very large, deep, slow, famous pool. Despite the numbers, most of the day was really slow, most of them came in a real quick spurt when that group of fish were encountered. I literally think my brother yanked out 20 in a 15 minute time frame while trying to hold off the mob which saw his success. He really couldn't leave and get us. When we eventually found him and figured out what was goin on, we got a few casts in too, which is where most of the rest of the fish came, but it was by then "fished over" and the action had slowed. My brother got bored later, put a live minnow on the bottom of the slow hole, sat down and ate lunch. Thats when he caught the first bass. He then used that as his tactic for a while, and hauled in 2 more big bass before others caught on. All of the non-trout came by the same tactic, but not a single trout.

I suppose the difference is water temp and flow this year. Last year morning water temps were 41, which was still warmer than most years. This year, I got a water temp reading of 52 on Saturday morning, and water levels were closer to a normal July than April.

Comparitively, the same 4 guys last year caught a combined 83 on the first day last year. I had 27 of them. Only saw a handful of other guys while working about a mile of water. This year we fished the same stretch and probably saw 20-30 other guys, plus they were on our side since it was easy to cross this year, and the concentrated fish concentrated the people too. So we had some issues with being pushed in on this year, and while we'd normally just leave, you really couldn't if you hoped to catch fish, since they were all right there less than 20 yards from where the bucket went in. It was not as enjoyable as most years, if that were the normal first day, I probably wouldn't take part.

 

[troutbert]

Pcray,

Good stuff. Your brother sounds like one of those "naturals" when it comes to fishing.

 

[Fishidiot]

Pcray,
Neat report - sounds like some great fishin. What did the smallies and the muskie bite on (I'm guessing spinner lures or maybe streamer flies)?

 

[pcray1231]

I don't know if you mean that facetiously or seriously.

He's a relatively serious fisherman (not as much as we are, but more than the average Joe), 3 years my elder. Just not a trout guy. Pretty much he's a generalist, you can find him after smallies, catfish, carp, etc. He's especially into musky, though. He loves to go down to the river, or the spillways of dams, and cast those huge lures around. He doesn't get out as much as he'd like due to 2 young children, but he's on his way to being a hardcore musky guy.

He's not into trout at all. He joins us on the first weekend for the same reason I join and fish bait, mainly out of tradition and a chance to get the family (which scattered throughout the state) together on the stream. My dad and I usually outfish him on opening weekend, because by 10 a.m. he's messing around with suckers and bass in the slow water. He just rarely has any success with the warmwater species in April. This was just his day I guess. He lucked onto that manmade hotspot before anyone else found it, built up big numbers in a short period of time before it was over. Then after a few fishless hours and he gave up on trout like usual, he actually had some success this year in the slow water, while we were still hellbent on the trout. Good for him!!

That hellbender my dad hooked was the first I've seen on a hook. We've seen numbers of hellbenders in the water, and caught a few mudpuppies, but never actually hooked a hellbender.

Fishidiot: Live minnows. Pretty sure they were mostly blacknosed dace. My dad seigns a few hundred pre-season every year (50 per day according to regs). He keeps them in an aerated cooler in garage till he goes up to camp, and there we keep them in a spring on our property. The wild ones may or may not work better, but they are certainly hardier, they don't die so quickly when being hauled in cars, carried in buckets, put on hooks, slapped against the water, etc.

 

[troutbert]

I was serious. From your description of the day it sounded like he was one of those guys who just always catches loads of fish. Maybe that was just one particular day.

In high school I had a buddy that never read any fishing books and often used unusual, odd techniques but he always seemed to catch big fish and lots of them, to everyone else's amazement. He just seemed to be a "natural" at catching fish.

 

[pcray1231]

eh, I catch a lot more fish, and usually more than him in a given day (this day was an exception), and if you go by yearly numbers it isn't even close. But he likes size, and he usually catches several BIG fish a year, far bigger than anything I ever catch, and a much wider variety of species. Not better or worse, just different goals.