March 18, 2018 – The Student Becomes the Master??? – Pickering Creek DHALO

I guess we barely waited for sunrise, but we did beat any potential crowds.

Eric took delivery of a 10 foot 4 weight fly rod this week, in hopes of upping his nymphing game, so he was itching to get out somewhere close this weekend.  He had a small window this morning, and so did I, actually, so we just headed over to the Pickering DHALO early for about 4 hours of fishing.  The place gets pounded, but he knows it pretty well, so it seemed like as good a place as any to put the long rod and the euro-nymphing set-up to a good test.  It was cold, about 27 degrees when he swung by my house to pick me up, but it was probably a zoo on the creek after lunch when it warmed up to 50 degrees, and we caught plenty of fish in the cold, anyway, so sometimes early morning is a good call on pressured creeks, regardless of weather. 

Success sans bobber!

In exchange for all of 10 or 15 minutes of nymphing instruction from the “master,” I did earn a Wawa breakfast sammie and the pleasure of watching the young bull hook a few fish on the new rod, sans indicator.  The dude can fish, and did his YouTube and internet research for months before buying the new rod, so it was not like I was teaching a novice or something.  I just eyed up his leader configuration, coached for a minute about line management, backseat drove him to fish a few prime winter drift lines, and maybe shouted a preemptive, “There’s one!” as he had four eyes on his sighter line to start, I suppose…  Even though I appreciated the tutelage of many over the years, I also have a thing about someone watching me fish over my shoulder, so I did not linger too long after establishing that he was doing enough correctly to catch more fish without me around to bother him.  I left him for a good while on his own to figure stuff out, well, on his own.  I started wandering downstream to a couple spots a little off the beaten path, and I landed two fish for the effort.  I was hoping to find another wild fish, but no dice today.  When we joined up again, we fished a few of the same holes together.  The irony of today is that I decided to fish my 9’ 4wt in case there were any hatches, and I definitely missed a few fish that I probably would have stuck with the rod I fish with 90% of the time now, my own 10’ 4wt.  

Some fat, healthy stocked bows, maybe 7 for me.

I bet I netted 6 or 7 after sticking more than that, however, most on the size 16 prince nymph I was using as a dropper.  Since the only bugs we saw were the little black stoneflies periodically taking to the air, this was not a surprise.  I also had a couple on a red brassie midge tied off the bend of my anchor fly (probably why I lost a couple fish after a short battle on size 20 barbless).  The fish are big, so that was fun.  The average was 14 inches, I bet, and a some fish were 16 inches or more and looked like they may have held over from a previous stocking, not the one last month.  

File under: things you don't see from the couch.

I am back to work this week, but classes often start slowly, so I am thinking about taking a little longer trip on Monday.  I am itching to sink a few big stoneflies in a couple Lehigh Valley creeks (I took a skunk on a short trip to an especially fickle one earlier this week!), especially after having such a good time on Fishing Creek last week.  Today was a successful trip for Eric, though, so I am glad I was there to help out a little and was able to sneak in a short weekend trip, which I consider a bonus most of the time.  Apparently, I am now giving Czech nymphing lessons on stockies if anyone is interested J