February 23, 2020 – Blue-lining Eric’s Childhood Homestead – SEPA freestoner

Back in his old stomping grounds.

Eric and I have been talking about fishing this little creek in SEPA for a couple years, and we finally decided to do it on a cold morning in February.  He grew up in farm country, and it sounds like he enjoyed a level of free-range childhood.  He is only in his mid-30s, so the idea of a free-range millennial is rather impressive and explains a lot about his personality and many hobbies and interests.  Fly fishing is one of them, but as a kid he used to get dropped off in the woods and fish this creek for trout with gear.   One issue with some of these blue lines near civilization is that the landowners are very smart about triaging the use of posted signs, usually right where someone would need to park legally to access, even if much of the area is not posted.  This creek is known, this watershed having been assessed for wild fish some years back, but access is very limited.  Since his family is still in the area and knows many of the landowners, Eric was aware of two places where we could park legally and gain access, so we met around 6 AM and were situated, suited up, and bushwhacking by 7 AM.  Besides a couple deer trails to help the cause, there were few if any signs of activity in the first stretch, but we tried to penetrate a good distance into the woods in order to see as much of the creek as possible in our short window this morning.

It was 26 degrees when we left our neighborhood, so I am sure it did not get warmer as we drove north and west.  It was mild on Saturday, and I knew it was going to get milder today, but the clear skies and slight breeze allowed the overnight temps to really come down.  After landing our first of two wild browns, I took a water temp reading, a good one where the thermometer sat in the water a long time while Eric fished a prime hole, and it read a whopping 37 degrees.  Not surprising, then, it took until about 10 AM to start seeing bugs and to land our only two fish.  We explored two stretches of creek, one much fishier looking than the other, but even the second stretch had some impressive log jams and holes where there would surely be fish. It had a been a while since Eric explored this area, so his memory was foggy, and I had no clue what to expect in terms of creek and cover.  I thought small and flat, which it was in some spots, so I had a dry dropper on my 8-foot 3 weight.  The first stretch has some nice pocket water, plunges, and deep runs with undercut banks—a mountain freestoner in many respects—so I was really missing my 10-foot nymphing rod at home in the garage. 

We were very happy to see this little fella.

Eric was the first to switch to a pair of nymphs under an indicator, but I eventually followed suit.  One smart thing I did, however, was cut my tapered leader back, tie on a tippet ring, and then just added a depth-appropriate flat length of 5X tippet.  I say smart because by leaving a visible loose tag on the tippet ring knot, and heavier leader that I could also see, I was able to remove the bobber when it would get in the way.  I caught our first fish tightline nymphing with this makeshift sighter set up.  It was a nice 8 or 9 incher, so we were pretty excited at our success.  It is one thing to read that the watershed has wild fish but another altogether finding them the first time.  We knew from our walk in that there were a few other spots like this one upstream, so we moved a little faster now and just targeted these prime spots like deep bend pools, log jams, and undercuts.  It was Eric’s turn to catch one, so I hung back, but after he broke off one of his nymphs, he invited me into a sweet looking spot, and of course I landed the best of the day….  This was a plump, healthy 11-inch fish, too!  Despite me hanging back the rest of the trip, we could not put Eric on a fish, but we did explore a lot and will be back with a lot more intelligence than we had this time.  Eric had to settle for a nice walk, a fresh antler shed, and a hug from Mom and Dad before we left for home.  We both enjoyed a couple fosnots, PA Dutch potato doughnuts, fresh from his mom’s oven, so things could have been a lot worse!

Bad lighting, but not a bad fish!