 |
| Pretty male to start. |
Eric and I made a post-Halloween trip to our little spot
this morning, hoping the rain from earlier in the week would have woken up our
friends. The creek was low the last time
we visited, so the flows were better today.
There was a little remaining stain to the deeper holes too. It was cold, but not as cold as the morning
before or what was forecasted following the next cold front set to arrive later
in the morning. We reached the creek around
7:30 AM in a conscious effort to give the sun an hour to warm things up, but
the sun was short-lived. We did sneak in
about 3 hours of fishing before the rain arrived. If fishing were even decent, I don’t think some
moderate rain would have chased us off, but fishing was tough—perhaps as a
result of what was coming—so we allowed ourselves to be chased after landing a
few small to average wild browns.
 |
| Cold and cloudy, micro-caddis, micro-trout. |
I saw Eric drop one, and he may have landed a parr, so he
had to live vicariously through my very moderate success. I was throwing his bugs, so at least he got
to see more success on his “blue collar caddis,” something I have called his
squirrel caddis in previous posts and something he put together as a cheap,
fast, and effective point fly. It is a
nice guide style fly, for sure. The
other fly that worked was his green midge/small caddis larva, one I have not
had success with since I fished it on the much-pressured Little Lehigh back in
July. This fly’s time is coming again as
winter approaches—I am thinking Valley dropper par excellence? This simple
fly took the best fish of the day.
 |
| Only a few. |
The creek is still continuing to change after each heavy
rain, so it may be a different place by the spring, but nothing too drastic has
happened. We have yet to figure out
where they go during the colder months in the stretch to which we have access. In May and June when they are spread out,
they are in most fishy spots, regardless of depth, but my guess is that they
hunker in the few roots and undercuts here.
They also move to spawn and winter-over, no doubt. I see a couple places where I would expect to
see redds soon, but I also see a lot of barren water—not uncommon for shallow
freestoners with a lot of exposed bedrock.
I even wonder if they move down to the bigger creek it feeds as the
water cools. Anyway, this was another
chance to learn how the creek performs in different seasons. So far, the fall is not prime, but this has
been a dry fall. We also did not do well
in early February, but who does most days in that month?
 |
| Widowmaker still up there |
Eric is an archer and has taken one buck and is looking
for a doe and a first deer for his mom (on a crossbow!). He just loves the woods. I too agreed that it was just a good excuse
to be outdoors this morning. The fact
that we had this place to ourselves on a weekend did not go unappreciated
either. I am hopeful that this is the
start of a wetter weather pattern, and I hope the weather calms down enough to
head out again this week. I spent the weekend submitting grades for four of my classes that are accelerated and have now concluded. Only having two remaining
until the holidays will feel like a luxury.
I have a research paper due this week, but nice weather and good flows
are my motivation to get it done!
No comments:
Post a Comment