May 26, 2021 – A Tale of Two Fishes: How the Streak Ends – Brodhead Creek

Best wild one of the day landed.

I was expecting my run of piggies to end and was okay with it, but I didn’t want it to end the way it did today.  Believe it or not, I lost a massive wild brown this morning.  He was probably 22 or 23 inches and just a wide-bodied and kyped-up specimen.  With low water and hot weather, and the low expectations associated with them, I guess I just made a lazy move in the end that probably cost me a photo of this beast, but I will not soon forget the encounter.  After having a good morning with a mix of wild browns to 15 inches and some nicer rainbows too, I didn’t think the late morning was going to offer me another opportunity at a truly big fish.  I had been effectively working shallow pocket water and riffles since 6 AM, slowly working through every nook and cranny and picking up fish.  For the conditions a couple of the wild browns were pretty good fish, so I was content and having a blast landing them in challenging water on small bugs—mostly Eric’s bomb 16 walts and an 18 blowtorch on the dropper tag.

A good early start.

I was not purposely avoiding a deep run downstream where I have tangled with a few good fish over the years, because I was catching fish doing what I was doing, but I was waiting for more caddis to show so that I would not have to plumb the 4 and 5 foot depths to get at the fish.  I kept sneaking prolonged looks, scanning for risers, so I intended to get down there eventually.  The water temperature was 64 degrees, which is a bit high for May, but it also means that resident fish probably felt good anywhere they wanted to be.  Some of the rainbows, who fight like madmen if they’ve been around for a year or more, were a bit stressed after release, which is what prompted me to take the water temp check to begin with—like it was friggin late June or something!  I am tired of the drought conditions, as I may have mentioned, but they have allowed me to get at some of these pigs in places that are sometimes treacherous to access until early summer and again in late fall.  

Early success with the waltz but the blowtorch worked once caddis started popping.

I have been experimenting with using nylon and copoly tippet again instead of fluoro, at least on bigger creeks or when visibility and sink rate for smaller bugs is not an issue, and because of that I was also experimenting today with a clinch knot, not an improved.  I have less fear of tippet slipping when it is not fluorocarbon, I suppose, and I read some article in a magazine where dude swore the improved did not improve the strength—or not all that much, anyway.  Well, dude is still right.  I did not have a clinch knot on a fly fail today on some decent fish in heavier current, including this huge brown, but I did lose the pig because I made a lazy move and added tippet with a blood knot.  I had been fishing shallow riffles, as I mentioned, so when I got to the deeper runs, I needed a lot more depth and bigger bugs to get deep.  Instead of wasting 4 feet of tippet, I just added a couple more feet for the deeper water, and it was that knot that failed me.  I landed a 15-incher with the same knot, as well as a couple other decent fish, but about 5 minutes into this battle, the big brown took a run for shallow rubble and was gone.

Some decent fish.

This was after he had already jumped twice and ranged all over the pool.  I could let him run and pull drag in the deeper water a couple times, but he finally decided to head for the other bank and try to drag his face or something sneaky, so I gave it just a bit too much pressure in an effort to turn him back.  Instead, I got back my original 4 feet of copoly with a squiggle at the end.  Freakin’ tragic.  Well, it had been a good run, you know?  With the water so low, this might have been the one that I lost in the winter.  He may have just move up into heavier water for cover or for those emerging bugs.  It was definitely bigger than the 20 I caught in April this year near the same 300 yards of riffle and run.  I was pissed at myself but shook it off long enough to rig to fish a bobber in the really deep spot before the tailout of this hole.  I landed a couple more bows, and then I had a monstrous golden rise up from the depths and follow my bugs on the swing before I lifted to recast.  He took the pink tag fly on the very next cast.  This was not the consolation prize I was looking for.  The thing fought like a Target bag, but when it came to the net it barely fit AND finally started fighting like he had been caught.  In fact, I dropped him in the sand at least twice trying to get you some content—he fought harder on land than in the water.  What a mess he was too—it looked like his face was rotting away, he might have been missing an eyeball, and when I let him go, he actually swam back to me and hung out at my feet like a loyal dog or a fish suffering the effects of Stockholm Syndrome.

Frankenfisch!  Not the consolation prize I was looking for....

After an adrenaline-fueled fight with the brown, this was just sad enough to make me head for home.  But just before I had made it back to the parking spot, I found some fish rising in a shady spot.  It was about 10:30 AM and getting damn hot now that the sun had burned off the early haze.  Humid too.  But standing waist deep in a flat, shaded bend pool, I gave these fish a go until, after landing three, I determined they were all likely rainbows.  It just felt too much like stocky bashing—which has its place, mind you—but after the previous tale of two fishes, I decided it was best to go home and write this up for some potential therapy.  So far it has not worked.  It was a good run that had to end tragically, I know, and at least I didn’t break a leg or a rod or one of a dozen other possibilities.  Some of them sound better right now than losing that fish though!

Cute mallards and those future fish-eating mergansers here too.  Plus some B-reel.