June 14, 2019 – Some (Nearly) Summer Small Stream Sneaking in SEPA – Hay Creek

More rain, so what to do?

More rain this week, but I could not see myself fishing Valley again.  I like the place, for sure, but I reserve love for only a few creeks, and even then I couldn’t fish many of them as much as I do Valley—especially the last two rainy years!  Believe it or not, I went to Hay for the first time last fall.  I did a lot of exploring that day before I found the more productive water, and I only caught one stocked rainbow while landing a bunch of small wild browns and a lot of rougher species.  Today, in a different season, was a much different experience, but equally fun.  I caught wild browns and stocked rainbows.  I also caught stocked browns and a couple browns for which the verdict is out.  Nice fins, a blush of blue behind the eyes, but also a few beauties with evidence of a long period of fin regrowth.  Unless someone is stocking fingerling rainbows, or a particularly adventurous one swam up from the Schuylkill River, I may have even landed a wild bow, 6 inches long and all parred-up.  I also caught a bunch of chubs and fallfish and lost a mess of little fish, some wild trout others rough fish, so action was steady.  The water was stained and above normal, but in good condition to nymph.  I brought my 3 weight 10 footer, and I found enough space or was able to get close enough to riffles, runs, and plunges, even some wood, to get to use the long rod effectively.  At bends and below some plunges, the creek gets to 15 feet wide and deeper, but the average size in this stretch is much tighter and shallower.  On any other day not post a week of rain storms, a dry dropper or terrestrial would have been the right call.

Still landed plenty of these, but definitely a different experience than last fall.

In my previous post about Hay, I tried to explain why this particular section exists and produces some wild fish and holds over many others.  Today, I took the long way out to explore the headwaters, though I did not fish them.  There is just so much tree cover in the deep gorge that I am not surprised that even some brook trout remain in the posted water upstream.  I am sure that the rain this year and last allowed fish to move further up and down the creek than in other years, so I found stocked fish in great shape, beautiful many of them, in places well off the beaten path.  It is a little disappointing to drop the nymphs into a prime holding spot, set the hook and fight a strong fish, only to slip the net under a stocked bow or brown, but the experience itself was just like hunting for wild fish in an isolated, small freestoner, so I quickly revised my disappointments and expectations and simply enjoyed. 

A bucket, the River, a redd?

Today was the last (half) day of school for the boy, and Tami’s dad was flying in from Ohio, so I only had about 6 hours total to travel and fish.   I spent just under 4 hours fishing, I suppose, just after 8 AM until about 11 AM, but I tried to cover more water than last fall, and I did find some great holes upstream of where I ended last year.  I know that there is still more unposted creek to explore, and this creek is right in Tom H’s wheelhouse, so the two of us might have to take a longer walk this fall.  The fish were where they should be, and I was rewarded for making tough casts or testing particularly snaggy spots.  The rainbow that I think was wild was in such a spot, a really small pocket behind a rock in a riffle, and some nice browns were in the bounciest slow(er) pockets in a given stretch, not unlike the better fish would be on a wild trout creek.  If there is a pocket the size of a dinner plate that looks too good not to hold a fish, there is usually something in there, especially when fish have moved from feeding on caddis in riffles to hiding in riffles for oxygen and overhead cover for the summer.  I lost my first good brown in a deep log jam situation, and I was miffed because it looked wild, but I landed another shortly thereafter, and it was just a gorgeous holdover, so I will tell myself the first one was part of a stocked pair who made a life here in this wood pile. I hooked the first fish while below a down tree, so in order to net, I had climb over said tree while the fish was hooked up, all the while trying to keep him out of the other branches and roots.  It ended as expected, although I managed to keep him on during the gymnastics only to lose him later in the match.

A few really pretty holdover browns.

It was a chilly and breezy morning that ended far too quickly.  It was the kind of day where I could have fished until 2 or 3 PM before remembering it was nearly summer and getting warm.  I did not take a water temp reading, but the air was in the low 60s, yet the water still felt cold to the touch, so I did not bother checking, feeling confident that I was working some cold water for mid-June.  I saw an isolated sulfur or two but not much else in terms of bug life.  Not surprising, a Frenchie worked on most fish, but a size 18 pheasant tail on the dropper also landed a good number of fish.  A terrestrial with a drowned ant or something on the dropper would be fantastic in clearer conditions because there is so much overhanging vegetation and wood everywhere.

A nicer bow that took the dropper.  Love the translucent fins!

We have my father in law visiting until Thursday, and I am also doing a writer’s retreat as part of my MFA program starting next weekend and lasting until the following Friday, but I hope I can get out at least once or twice this upcoming week.  I guess I could cash in the Father’s Day card on Sunday morning, but I will have to check the forecast.  There is always Valley Creek, right?

Another ate the pt dropper.