March 14, 2020 – Third Time Was the Charm for Me – SEPA Blueline

A tough but sometimes rewarding (I'd heard) little SEPA anomaly.

Tom and I picked a challenging day to visit a little SEPA trickle that has wild reproduction but is already pretty technical fishing on a good day.  Low water, high sun, breezy, but we eventually saw bugs and fish.  Much like our Thursday marathon, we spooked more trout than we caught, but unlike the last two times I crawled around this place with him, one of us actually landed a decent small stream fish—and it was me this time, while skittering a caddis dry fly too!  It was just an impromptu thing.  He texted me in the evening yesterday saying he was thinking about giving the creek a shot on Saturday afternoon.  I said I would touch base in the morning, and we both ended up having a window around 1:30 or 2 PM.  I got plenty of woods time in today, having taken a long walk with the boy along the Wissy in the morning.  It was a cooler, dryer day, but still mild for this time of year.  Tom and I didn’t expect much when we saw the low flows, but we decided to target a couple holes we know are often occupied with wild fish.  Tom has landed several, just not with me present.  Like I mentioned, I saw enough of them to know he was not lying, but I had never hooked one until this afternoon.  After the spots produced nothing but three chubs, we explored more of the creek, recon for the future, but were lucky enough to spot a small group of fish that we had not disturbed.  They were in flat water, but it was deep enough that we could crouch and not be seen—which is not often the case here.  Tom tried to drift a couple bugs on an indicator down to them.  The first time, nothing happened, so he made a second cast that landed closer to them, and one of them came up like a brook trout and popped his tiny thingamabobber!  He got excited, set the hook, and ended up with an epic tangle that can only happen on a small, tight stream. 

On a skittering dry fly after all that sneaking.

Me, I was so sympathetic to his plight that I was already tying on a deer hair caddis to float over them….  My second cast was pretty spot on, and then I also extended the drift by gently shaking out a few feet of line.  A big fish, like 14 inches, slowly rose behind the dry and even turned and followed it downstream.  It was not what he wanted, but he was hungry.  When my line was about to straighten out and drag, I decided to see if skittering the bug across the surface would get him to take.  Instead, a smaller competitor who had given this one space to look and refuse said, I will take that!  Tom and I watched it happen in clear water, and I giggled the fish all the way into the net for a photo and release.  We put them down, so to rest them we took an exploratory walk upstream, but when we returned, we could see a riser further downstream in the same hole.  Tom’s turn to creep.  He even climbed out on a down tree in order to get some room for a backcast.  Good cast, fish rose, and he landed a chub!  On that note we called it good, just content that I now have first-hand knowledge of wild browns in this little suburban sanctuary.