Saturday, June 11, 2016

June 10, 2016 – A Strange Day of Highs and Lows – Bushkill Creek

Pretty close to making a new friend.




















My day ended with the very unique experience of coming face to face with a whitetail fawn, still unsteady on her legs.  I could have reached out and touched the little thing, honesty!  She was going to walk right into me like she thought I was mom for a second until she caught a whiff, I suppose.  I was able to get two pictures too, which is strange because I couldn’t get a fish to pose to save my life.  It was not a bad day; in fact, it was a great day if it wasn’t for the constant yin and yang.  I hooked 3 fish in the first fifteen minutes just killing time while it got light enough to wade a deeper stretch I intended to target, but there were really slow times too.  It was a cold morning, but a hot afternoon.  I had fun, and fished a good long time with no other anglers in sight, but I also would have like to have been home by 1 PM as I had planned.

One of 6 landed of a dozen hooked....
Every positive had a negative and every negative had a positive: I hooked at least 12 fish, but I only landed 6 of them, and I only got a picture of the one to the left, the second of the morning, and even that one was a little blurry.  I saw one of the biggest wild browns I have seen in a long time rising to caddis, even my caddis, but it refused my offering twice before I put him down.  The list goes on and on.  I hooked a great holdover rainbow early in the morning, and I lost him after the third or fourth leap, a couple of them 4 feet in the air.  I went back to the spot for some redemption before I left, and likely hooked the same fish a second time, and he proceeded to take me deep into his lair pictured below.  He hung around a sunken limb, and I just gave him even pressure.  I even sneaked around to net him, confident he was still on the line, just hung up, but he was gone.  I got both flies back though.  Speaking of which, I didn’t hang up much at all, but I Iost two pricey streamers, one in a tree, and one on a violent strike downstream.  The fish that jumped shortly thereafter, trying to throw my muddler, would have been a nice fish had I not broken him off.

Two shots at him, and I blew it both times.




















Another time, I caught a solid rainbow in a great hole I never even knew existed, but then the next cast looped two flies around the tree he, and probably his friends, were hiding under in the high sun.  I ruined the hole, when I said screw it and went to retrieve my flies, but I gained two more hand-tied nymphs when I retrieved mine.  Obviously, the last guy didn’t want to ruin the hole, like me, for a couple flies.  I even landed a decent wild brown who escaped a photoshoot, but another one leaped right into me in tight pocket water and got off because I had no chance of keeping him tight with all the jumping and a barbless dropper.  Ying and yang all day, good and bad, relaxing and frustrating.  I already check gauges and weather, and now I guess I have to check my horoscope before fishing.  Something was up today.

Another shot of my buddy.




















I love pocket water this time of year.

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