April 5, 2019 – My Kind of April Day – Wissahickon Creek

A few hot bows in the mix.  Triploids?  Holdovers?

I know it can’t just be me who prefers cooler, cloudier days over the kind of 70+ and sunny days we have already had a few times this month.  Perhaps it is because I live in such a populated area, a suburb not three miles from the Philadelphia border?  The competition for green space gets fierce on the nice days, so I get excited for the days when others work or Netflix and chill.  Or maybe I am old enough to remember when spring eased its way in more slowly?  Maybe it is just that nice days are rarely good fishing days even if it feels good to be outside?  I am not totally sure, but I do know that today was not a day for crowds, so it was my kind of day.  Heck, if it had rained just a little bit more, I may have chosen to fish Valley instead of the Wissahickon. 

Dark wintery water remains.

As a matter of fact, I almost picked up my 9 footer still rigged with a dry-dropper rig when I went to the garage after 9 AM this morning.  Instead, I went for the 10 foot nymphing rod and settled on a section of the Wissy for which I have a soft spot.  Even though this section is in Philly, it feels like a mountain freestoner, and with enough riffles and runs and pocket water, not to mention a couple springs, it stays cool enough to hold fish over in years like this one, wet years.  I caught a few this winter in the same general area, proof that stocked browns made it through August and September of 2018.  Because the boy was getting home by 2:30 PM today following an early dismissal, staying close and fishing an old favorite spot seemed like a good plan, and it was.

Grubby hare's ear, and bright brownie.

On my walk down to the creek, I noticed a retaining pond, one a young Lukas called the froggy pond, was getting rather low, so the rain coming tonight is probably a good thing.  The flows on the creek were still good, however, and visibility was good as well.  A steady, scouring rain is needed, though, to wash all the winter-dark rocks clean, as it still looks like mid-winter on the creek.  I started at a favorite hole where I am always confident that fish remain—even in July some years just before the water temps hit 70 every day.  It is deep and choppy with some back eddies and odd hydraulics, so unless the fish are in the mood to chase a spinner, plug, or streamer, they must be patiently nymphed out of there.  I patiently nymphed eight out of there with a tungsten hare’s ear on the dropper, before popping on an indicator and landing three more on the far side of the creek, and then finally clipping off the sj worm anchor fly and replacing it with a bigger jigged pheasant tail and taking two more really deep, including the only two browns I caught today (2 out of 20?).  Obviously, a lot of fish were dumped here, and most of them looked like they had not yet been caught—no obvious wounds, although there are always a couple dead fish around this time of year.  Fish were caught and released here, for sure, and mostly successfully.  One can’t really deep hook a fish on a trout magnet or spinners, so let’s assume it was that sticky paste that did them in?  Or do they get lost off stringers?  It remains a mystery.  When I can reach them, I often fish them out and chunk them up on the banks for the raccoons, like Saint Francis would do, you know?

More Hare's ear.

There were two other holes that I wanted to try, and the first one had a young family in it, so I left that one for another time.  I swung my flies through some riffles on the way down, and caught a couple more and then broke one off being too macho with the hookset as the flies swung downstream.  I retied and kept heading to the next spot.  The second hole I wanted to try, a short walk downstream from the occupied one, was productive too, so I ended there about 1:50 PM when I notched 20 fish in an even four hours on the water without a shred of embarrassment—it’s been a tough start to the season!  The last three fish I caught were on a rubber legged black stonefly, just a buggy looking thing that would get deep quickly.  These last three were in a pocket in a riffle and they were hot rainbows who leaped multiple times and did not easily come to the net.  After the tough, windy Monday where I had to rely on the bobber to catch anything, I really enjoyed these final tightlined fish in faster water.  Although I only used the bobber to catch 4 or 5 today, the hits on the Euro rig were still very light.  It barely broke 45 degrees at 3 PM before the rain started falling, the downside of my preferred weather, so these fish were the welcomed exception.  Maybe I should have thrown the big stonefly earlier in the day?  Are there enough rhetorical questions in this post, I wonder?

New-fangled browns are getting prettier.