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| Yes, that is the reflection of an HD billboard in the water... |
I had a rewarding adventure this morning, exploring a tiny creek that doesn’t even show up on most maps. Although, I guess it can't technically be called blue lining if there are no blue lines on the map.... The creek is a spring fed tributary of another creek that I often fish, and it’s been on my radar to try for a few years, but I just never got around to it until today. It is amazing where wild fish can thrive if there is a little bit of spawning habitat and cool water temperatures in the summer so they don’t go belly-up. This place had discarded tires, and Doritos bags, and construction debris, and god knows what else in the stream bed, but it also had healthy wild fish and a good number of them in the prime holes.
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| One of the larger fish, one of over a dozen in less the three hours of fishing. |
As if often the case, it takes a while to find un-posted
areas to fish, and parking is often an entirely new challenge once you do. I did some recon on this creek before, so I
had taken care of the first part. I
eventually found parking that was a bit of a walk away from the access point, but
it was legal. I love getting the funny
looks when I am all Orvis-ed up walking along a main street in a city and carrying
a fly rod! It's a bonus to see the blue tarpaulin of a former homeless resident of the creek as I descend into the valley too...
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| Not the prettiest hole, but it yielded my first fish . |
Despite not being the prettiest place on earth, I quickly found a pair of deep holes, which were pretty
stained from the run-off of a nearby highway but looked very promising.
The water temp was a good 57 degrees in an un-shaded, shallow area, so
the fish were very active when hooked, some taking multiple leaps and
runs. On my 8 foot 3 weight rod, they
were a lot of fun. Even though the water
was stained, my first fish had no problem finding a size 16 mayfly nymph. I had no idea what kind of habitat was
upstream, so I spent some time on this first hole trying to get another. One decent fish chased a black bugger, but I
missed the hookset. Still, I would have
been happy landing one and seeing another if the rest of the creek didn’t prove
to be so fertile.
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| "Swimming" a scud or a soft hackle worked very well. |
I continued to work upstream and found some more boggy
deep holes, closer to the habitat of a true spring creek. I decided to tie on a scud and a zebra midge
dropper because I figured I could gently “swim” a scud back down to me. That approach ended up working with a variety
of flies. I caught well over a dozen
fish and dropped one or two more. No
hatching activity, but I did get fish to eat a caddis pupae in the film, the
midge, several on the scud, and even a few on a soft hackle March Brown (also
gently “swimming” it an inch at a time in quiet holes). By approaching slowly and kneeling a few
times, I was able to get multiple fish out of at least three deep, flat holes.
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| I think this was the first of the morning on a nymph. |
I had to quit by noon and go to work, so I ended at a
good spot, leaving a bit more water to discover next time, especially if I am
up to traversing a highway culvert (I am, though probably not in the rain with
stained water). I walked a bit
downstream from my drop in point to take a look around, but I didn’t see much
life, and I appeared to be getting much closer to posted land. These adventures always have the potential to
disappoint, and I only had a small window of time in which to execute the plan, so I was
very content to catch so many wild fish in such an unlikely spot.
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