July 7, 2020 – One Last Shot at the Local Trout for a While – Valley Creek

The Silver Fox wet-wading the warm mud....

Rain!  Well, more like floods.  Tom had off this week for his annual staycation, which usually involves some fishing, but this has not been the average early July.  There would be no further brook trout adventures for us this summer.  We texted back and forth on Monday during the floods and settled on the idea that if I was up and he was up and the gage and temps on Valley looked okay, then we would meet over there at 5 AM and give it one last go.  We caught some fish, but the water is spiking to 70 every day, and the warm rain did not help.  The fact that the entire woods flooded did not help with turbidity either, but before the sun lit up the particles, we had a short productive window.  I was encouraged that we even caught a few fish sneaking up a trib, but with the exception of a couple springs/seeps that seemed even warmer than the main branch.  I think I am done with the trout for the foreseeable future.  Plenty of other fisherman out, but I hope they carry stream thermometers!  Tom got a handful on the weenie, and I got a few on the walts.  I rigged up and debated the streamer rod at the ‘Ru as we suited up, but I decided to nymph the riffles based on the color and temps.  I did not picture many moving far to take a bugger today, but hindsight...  We got the fish back quickly with few photos.  In fact, all but one of the fish pictured here were Tom's in my hand, just for some content!  Fish were caught and the wet wading felt good even at 5 AM, so let’s just call it a bonus staycation day.  

Until the fall unless this pattern breaks