March 19, 2020 – Messing Around with a Mono Rig and Landing a Mess of Little Fish – Valley Creek

Many fish in a short window, but this was a good one for today.

I believe it was a week ago today that we all started working from home, and we have at least another full week to go—at least.  My classes will be solely online until May, through the end of the semester, in other words, and I have a feeling the soft deadline of March 30 for the boy’s school is very soft.  Everyone is healthy in my immediate family, and Tami and I are still employed, so I really have no major complaints, though.  I am trying to stay grateful and positive.  Sure, it takes a little longer to do my classwork and my grading solely online, and it is an inconvenience to have Tami and the boy home in my usually quiet, often unstructured home office.  That said, I know two of my friends are laid off or furloughed already, and a couple others expect that any day now.   Like I said, grateful.  We have had a lot of fun too.  The boy and I have taken a few long hikes, flew a radio controlled X-Wing fighter, and Tami and I have come up with at least one silly, sometimes ridiculous, thing to do as a family each evening, whether that is puppet shows, or scooter rides around the neighborhood, a kazoo concert, ice cream sundae bar.  I had not been fishing since Tom and I snuck out on Saturday, but with the overnight rain, I was watching the gages for a window and was fortunate enough to get out for about 3 hours this afternoon. 

Muddy water, pretty browns.

It was a day for blue winged olives at Valley, so it was a pretty crowded afternoon.  With many people off, and mild days, and bugs, I pretty much assumed that at least a half a dozen visitors would be present at any given stretch.  I was not wrong.  In fact, I counted over 10 fly fishermen in my short window.  I really didn’t care.  I was looking to catch a couple fish while the boy did his schoolwork online and Tami made some phone calls and napped.  What I was really hoping to do was test out my mono rig formula.  I was playing around in the garage earlier in the week and tied up a mono rig on my nymphing rod.  You can Google Euro nymphing mono rig and probably find videos, even diagrams.  Orvis and others now sell one for 12 bucks.  I winged it, perhaps going on memory from the first George Daniel book, but since I caught at least 20 trout on my rig today, I would say I got most of it right.  I probably should have thrown a streamer, as flows were around 80 CFS and rapidly falling, but I figured that it is not everyday that I can nymph so close to Valley fish and not spook them.  Today was a good day to test the mono rig and expect to be bounced plenty.

A few Valley-decent fish in the mix, most on a hot spot pt jig or a sexy walts, both size 16 to 18.

The majority of the fish I caught in the first hour were very small, sitting in the softer spots close to riffles.  As the creek started to clear, and olives and midges started coming out in some numbers, I began creeping up in size and fishing deeper and bouncier water.   The best two were under 12 inches but not by much.  I would estimate that I landed over 20 fish if I counted every trout, but only 6 of them were over 8 inches long!  If I had been throwing a streamer, I may have caught 5 decent ones and been lucky to get one really nice one, maybe, but I had a plan in my head to fish the mono rig, and so it was a quantity not quality mindset, I suppose.  I am a believer, and I will be working on my leader formula a little more, or I may break down and buy one the next time I need to order tippet.  The sensitivity is pretty impressive.  A couple times, I felt little ones rat-tat-tat like I was 12 and fishing a meal work on 2 lb test.  I will probably give the rig a shot on a creek with a larger average size fish tomorrow morning before the thunderstorms arrive.  This was a good trial run, however, and it was good to get out.