May 11, 2021 – A “Selfish” Kind of Day – Brodhead Creek

A lot of selfies with fish = selfish.

Where to begin with this one?  I put in a good 9 hours of fishing today on my home away from home creek in NEPA, and I landed close to 40 trout, I bet.  Only half a dozen of those were rainbows, so the wild fish came out in force for the emerging caddis and the security from falling high water.  Somewhere in the mountains of NEPA and NY it must have rained a lot in the last week because my comments about low water have been on hold for a minute now.  I bagged a Brodhead or Lehigh trip last week during a surprise spike, and it was 250 cfs on the Analomink gage when I went to bed last night, so pretty normal to high spring flows.  Not a day to hunt my white whale or try to tangle with my last Brodhead piggie on the lower reaches of the river.  This was supposed to be a Jay day, but he had a last minute family issue and had to bail out.  Of course, then, this is the day my favorite creek that has thus far been kind to far too few buddies actually played nice.  Only for me though.  I saw no one else with a fishing rod all day.  Maybe it was a Tuesday, or maybe this kind of flow is not the kind of flow dry fly fishermen get excited about.  Me, I love 200 in the upper end because it pushes fish to the sides or behind boulders for shelter.  The wading is more difficult, but the fishing can be better, so the extra effort is worth it.  Just before I nodded off at 10:30 PM tonight, I felt a charlie horse coming on and took some preemptive measures to avoid waking up locked in pain—a lot of work and not enough water, I guess, but one sure sign of a full day of aerobic fishing.

A good start to a beautiful spring morning.

I started fishing at 7 AM, and it was chilly, calm, and beautiful outside.  The colors in the woods are bright and green, and the creek just looked sexy.  Until I got my sea legs, I took it easy with wading and fished the near seams and behind obstructions I could reach.  No wading staff needed, not even felt boots, which was a pleasant surprise, and as it brightened and warmed up I kept inching out deeper and into pushier water to reach better spots.   I landed about 5 fish in the first chilly hour, a couple smalls, but also two over 12 inches, so I had a feeling it could be a good day.  I started out with big stonefly imitations with a blowtorch, either pink or red, on the dropper, and I only caught one average wild brown on the golden stone before losing it to deep wood debris. 

The blowtorch or the "double bubble" larva.

Of the huge number of fish I landed today, an overwhelming majority took a pink CDC tag fly/blowtorch on the dropper, an effective emerging caddis imitation.  I also landed some, including the best of the day and maybe all the rainbows, on a caddis larva.  Both bugs were only size 12 or 14, but I used the double tungsten bead trick again on the point fly—I have had success getting smaller bugs deep on the Lehigh and Brodhead, for example, by substituting split shot for a 3.3 mm tungsten bead, which turns any bug into a “double trouble.”  The extra weight is easy to slide on, and the countersunk beads even slide over the clinch knot.  Doesn't cast too poorly either.

My NEPA happy place.

By 11:30 AM, I had worked my way up through a favorite stretch of pocket water and had landed probably 20 fish.  The timeline gets blurry without the order of the photos I took, but by the time I left the first spot I had landed 5 wild fish that were over 15 inches long, 6 if you count a long skinny rainbow hen too!  One, which I thought would be my best of the day, was 18 inches and beautiful.  I would actually eclipse that later in the day at a second stretch of the creek with a 20.  A couple of the big fish were in sketchy spots, like a slick behind a boulder on the other side of the creek with nothing but riffle between us, so I lot of fun to land.  Touch and go at times if not for the luxury of 4X or 5X mono and those bigger bugs snugly set in their mouths.  I did have to race downstream after the 18-incher, who was in one of those tricky spots 30 feet away when I set the hook.  And there are few things more exciting than seeing fish in the high-teens take to the air.  Even with all that, I think I only lost two fish all day—out of 35 or 40, so pretty good odds!  Like I said, big bugs and heavier tippet because of the heavier flows certainly helps too.  I have already written about the benefits I feel using the 4-weight blank on bigger water.  

A lot of nice fish today.

When I reached the end of the line before lunch, there was an even stronger presence of caddis in the air, coming in waves, and I even watched two risers, debating with myself about whether I end my day with a dry fly.  I had already had a day, so what else was left to do, I figured.  My 10’6” combo is rigged with one of those shorty euro-nymphing lines, only 20 feet plus another 11 or 12 of leader, so it only takes a few minutes to rig again with a shorter tapered leader on the WF floating line on the back of the reel for some dry fly or streamer fishing.  Instead, I walked back planning to take a lunch break, but the presence of the bugs, even some large mayflies in the air, made me fish back through the same run of water again.  Not a bad plan because I had not waded out too far the first time through and intentionally had not reached some prime lies on the other side of the creek.  I caught average and smaller fish earlier in the morning too, but now the larger fish seemed willing to play also.  I caught another dozen or more fish the second time through, including a couple good ones and a bigger rainbow that I turned with a hookset earlier in the day.  I probably could have fished through a third time with only slightly diminished returns on numbers and size, a lot of targets as far as cover here, but it was 1:30 by now and I did need food and water and to lose some layers of clothing.

Another Brodhead piggie this spring.

I drank some water and then an iced coffee before driving to another spot upstream.  I then sat in the second spot for a few minutes and checked some email and had a sandwich, an orange, and a seltzer—pretty civilized for me, and yet I still was worried about charlie horses at bed time.  Part of my relaxed posture stemmed from seeing no vehicles that looked like fishermen here.  Feeling further charmed, when I hiked down to the creek, I walked right in on the tail end of another nice caddis hatch.  At least three good fish were working the back of a deep run.  With my first cast, I landed a 20-incher, and with my second cast, I landed a 15-incher.  I think I got the third riser to swipe at my bugs on the swing too.  Not bad.  All that commotion did put them down though.  

So, I have never seen a sunken boat on the Lackawanna, so props to the Brodhead?

Oh, yeah, a second Brodhead 20-incher this spring!  It was a bulldog of a fight in a deep hole instead of the pocket water I had fished earlier in the day, thank goodness.  The fish had been around, and from the looks of him, his DNA is all over this stretch by now.  A chunk of tail missing, a wound on the side from a raptor, but a thick and otherwise healthy wild brown trout.  According to the Silver Fox, whom I had been harassing with texts all day (along with Eric, as well, though I did not bother Jay until I got home) I was destined to fall in, break a rod, lose 100 dollars’ worth of tungsten, something before this streak of good fortune ended.   Not today.  It just fizzled out with some wind, sunshowers, and a few more dinky wild trout before I called it quits at 4 PM.  I have had days like this before, maybe even days on the Brodhead like this, but it’s been a long time.  Pretty awesome.

A good day.