September 18, 2019 – Self-Care is Healthcare – Berks County Limestoner

Count him!

Not that conditions have been great—low water, warm sunny days—but I have not been out in ten days mostly because I have been busy.  With the start of the school year and my semester, my days were filled with reading, grading, evaluations, committee work, shopping trips for the boy, doctor appointments, and so forth.  Always the overachiever, I also volunteered to be the first student to present a book, a 600 page monster, in my Gothic Fiction course this past week: the Mysteries of Udolpho—read at your own peril.  Finally caught up with grading and reading for a few days, I had to fish somewhere today.  Where to go was the issue, especially if I wanted to stay close to home and have some time left in the afternoon to work.  I settled on a creek in Berks that I haven’t been to since the spring.  I knew it would be low, as nearly all the streams in the region are, but it also has some limestone influence, so there was at least a chance I could find some holdover and wild fish on a pleasant late summer morning.

Low and clear in late, late summer.

A nearby gage showed promising water temperatures, too.  I left just before 8 AM, moving slowly after teaching a class on Tuesday night, but once I got away from the traffic of morning rush and started seeing some more rural landscapes, I started to relax and enjoy the ride.  Besides seeing a sarcastically-worded “Pumpkin Spiced Computer Repair” sign—I too wonder how that become a limited, seasonal commodity like the Shamrock Shake or something?—another sign for a massage place I passed spoke to me, so much so that I share it with Tami via text.  She has been fighting a back to school cold, so she needed the reminder too: Self-Care is Healthcare.  Cooperative fish or not, I needed to give myself a break today.

Doub' chub life.

I was surprised to find another vehicle in “my spot” on a Wednesday.  Disappointed for a minute since this was my high-confidence stretch with the conditions as they were, I still decided not to crowd dude in case he needed the solitude and therapy as much as me.  Instead, I drove to another stretch that I have been meaning to explore more.  Low, clear water is not a bad time to see how a stretch of stream really looks, where the holes are, for example, and there is the chance to sight fish even if you spook them before taking a shot.  I have only fished this particular stretch in spring when flows are normally high, and maybe once on a rainy summer day when, again, I was surprised by another car at my intended spot.  I did a lot of walking, running into posted signs too early in one direction and unimpressive water, for the most part, in the other direction.  I spooked a few small wild trout, hooked one in a shallow riffle, and landed far too many chubs, including a few doubles.  Doub’ chub, you know?  I was not impressed with this section, a bit uniform and muddy/sandy, although I did find two more holes that likely hold wild fish.  I even walked up a small tributary in the event that a few smart ones had used the cooler flows for some thermal refuge in the summer and had not yet left.  More chub life, unfortunately.

Great looking little hen.

Around 11:30 AM, when I exhausted the confines of the less familiar stretch or had seen enough, I drove back to my original spot for the last hour, and I finally found 4 fish to cooperate.  On a day like today, I am counting the YOY—pictured at the beginning of the post—that choked on a size 16 nymph.  This stretch has more holding water and a steeper gradient, so even though it was clear and low, I was not surprised that I was able to scare up a few fish to salvage the day, even at this less than perfect time of the afternoon.  The fact that I fished it behind someone else, and there were only a few obvious spots to target today, also gave me some gratification.  Besides the tiny, 4 incher, I also landed another fish that looked really good, great fins, no fused black spots, some red.  The other two were stockies from the spring, I bet. The water was only 64 degrees here, so the fish fought well.  With high sun and uber-clear water, however, the takes were far less enthusiastic than those of the ever-present chubs. I did spook a football of a fish in the tailout of a favorite hole, so if we get some rain this month and into October, I may have to return here to see what else lurks beneath the surface.

Salvaged the day with more holdovers.

Not a great outing, but I did need it, and I did explore a new stretch of the creek, which may come in handy the next time I have a surprising vehicle encounter at a certain pull-off.  It does not look like any immediate change in the weather pattern is coming before the weekend, and I will be busy on Thursday, Friday, and Monday, but I am hoping some of the lurking tropical storms bring future rains.  If we get some rain, I will surely sneak out with a streamer next week.  It may be time to head to bigger creeks the next time I need some self-care too.  Conditions on the Lehigh River, for example, are looking more positive each day, or I could take another shot at the Delaware smallmouth?