January 4, 2020 – The Silver Fox Helps Me Make it Three in a Row – Berks County Freestoner

The Silver Fox in action.

Yesterday afternoon, Tom H. tossed out the idea of fishing Valley or somewhere close to home today.  Having just finished fishing Valley, and worried about the crowds on a warm Saturday, I pitched another idea.  A small stream aficionado, he readily accepted the proposal.  I still have a lot to learn about this little creek in Berks County, but I have had a few successful trips in recent years, so I was confident that we would find some little wild fish and possibly some holdover stockers too.  We were not alone, as there were some other fly guys out and about, but we all seemed to give each other plenty of room naturally and with no discussion.  With a willing explorer along for the walk, and two guys inevitably covering water faster than one, we also ventured a lot farther into the watershed than I had ventured before.  In the process, we caught some fish where I expected, but we also had a few nice surprises in spots new to both of us.  We landed about 15 trout between us, but we tangled with a half a dozen more, along with the requisite chubs and fallfish that take hold in a freestoner that stays cool, but marginally so, every year.

My first respectable one of the morning.

To say Tom had a rough start would be an understatement!  I was empathetic because we have all been there on days when you find every tree, stumble and create epic two-fly plus indicator tangles, lose flies, have a buddy (in Tom’s case me) break your 3 weight while trying to offer an assist.  Yeah, I broke the tip of his small stream rod after freeing a snag…. I was just pulling line from the reel, as I have done a thousand times, by tugging on the rest of his leader, as one might do to get more slack after netting a fish, for example, so it may have had a small fracture in the blank section before today.  To make matters worse, I landed a decent wild brown, our first of the morning, between his epic tangle and rod breakage.  I only brought one rod, but luckily Tom brought two, and we were not far from the parking spot, so after a short walk back we were back in action.  Things did get better after that rough start.

Dinks, mega-chubs, and a gangsta blue heron.

Before we caught a good holdover apiece, mine a white-tipped bow of 12 inches, Tom’s a beautiful former stocked brown of 13 inches, I did land a handful of very small wild browns.  The thing about a creek with a small population of wild fish is that even the small fish can get into a prime spot.  Expecting a nicer fish after sneaking a beautiful cast into a prime lie, I was rewarded with a few 4 and 5 inchers and even mega-chubs.  Fish were eating though.  After landing the really nice holdover rainbow, our only bow of the day, I stepped back and gave Tom a shot at the same deep hole, and he connected with the holdover brown, which fought really well.  In past visits, I had not gone much farther upstream of this productive hole—I hadn’t needed to, honestly, finding wild and stocked fish aplenty well downstream of this point.  Today, we pushed ahead and found some new keeper spots and more fish, as well.  

The only holdovers, but they were a couple nicer ones.

A brave heron would not move from his honey hole, which became Tom’s shortly thereafter.  I was tighlining with a frenchie and that caddis grub again, but I had convinced Tom to add an indicator, so I jumped to the head of this run while he fished the hole in the soft water near a down tree.  He caught at least four fish and dropped a couple others in this spot.  The heron was miffed and seemed to want a piece of what Tom was catching at one point—part seagull, I guess.  The creek narrowed here between a steep natural bank on one side and a sharp drop from rip rap on the other, so we basically had to fish from the rocky bank.  From that perch and without a net, Tom just had to let a couple fish flop off.  These were “real-sized fish” as he noted, like 7 or 8 inchers, but had he hooked something bigger, I certainly would have tried to hobble down the rip rap again to net and get a look.  I was just happy to see him get into some more, especially after, you know, breaking his rod, but he wasn’t done yet. 

A few more "keepers" to end the afternoon.

The hole where we quit for the afternoon was memorable.  I think we both pulled a couple more fish and tangled with a couple others here.  It was deep with a back eddy, so the longer we messed with it, the dirtier it got.  Before we muddied it up too badly, I landed two 8 or 9 inchers myself after putting on a little Airlock indicator, and I missed the likely fish of the day.  Before taking my own advice about popping on an indicator to fish a deeper, slower hole, I tightlined this spot and made a half-hearted hookset on what I thought was either the front face of a mid-stream boulder or a fish.  I guess I was leaning towards boulder based on my limp-wristed hookset, but after I felt a good fish pulse one, twice before coming off, the same 14 inch wild-looking brown jumped three more times without my fly in his mouth.  He thought he had been stuck, and I wished that it were true!  Disappointing but entertaining, at least.  It was after 3 PM by now and getting darker in the valley, perhaps due to approaching rain more than dwindling daylight, so we found an easy trail, cleverly hidden in plain sight, and took a leisurely walk back after a rather decent day of winter fishing.  Oh, and the broken rod is probably under warranty, so I am likely off the hook for that….