June 11, 2021 – End of the Week, End of the School Year, End of an Era – Valley Creek

Tough start, but Tom and I did fool a few smalls with the nymphs around dinner time.

It’s been a busy seven to ten days.  Besides having a major paper due for my first class of the summer, which ends on June 14, it was commencement at work, and I had a couple meetings about a grant proposal/course release for the fall before I am officially done for the summer and harder to reach.  I am taking another accelerated class for my own degree too, so reading and writing a lot, even creatively at times.  That is all normal, although it was the boy’s last week of school, and we had a second vaccine shot appointment before he starts a few weeks of camp, so a bit busier than normal.  The kicker, however, was that this was also the week my mom and I finally decided to sell my dad’s bass boat!  I was fielding questions and offers all week, some the shady Craigslist kind, but it ended up not too bad.  The second guy I spoke to came down with cash on Thursday, and we did the deal with little fanfare.  Before that, I had to clean it up, get it running, and all that.  I had to play catch up on Friday with grading, but I actually got a lot done by early afternoon, so I was itching to mark the somewhat official end of the school year and accomplishing the mission of getting Joe’s bass boat in the hands of a family who can use it.

Magic hour had a lot to do with it, but Eric's sexy sculpin helped for sure!

It had been raining off and on all day, nothing too crazy, but steady and cool showers.  I decided to stalk a few streams on the USGS site and had a couple in mind, but then I thought of the Silver Fox working from home, probably stalking the Valley gage.  He actually was.  I decided some social fishing was in order, plus he was going to take my 10-foot 4 weight off my hands, along with a line and reel that was my dad’s—definitely a theme of cleaning out some of the less important memories this week, I guess.  Joe had just taken up fly fishing with me before he passed away, and the reel was like new, so really no sentimental value.  I did keep his 9 foot 5 weight for my boy, however.  Same with the boat.  My dad had a different boat and a different truck or SUV every two to five years.  I believe this tracker made our last trip to Canada, but it was not one of the boats that I was already missing, like a tank Xpress he let go a couple years prior because it was getting hard to push around the driveway with a dolly or crank up the ramp when alone.

Nearly dark before the 12-incher showed up.

It was about 5 PM before Tom and I were fishing the Park.  The water was not all that high, but like my last trip out, it was pretty dirty.  I was hoping fish would be in riffles, so we could beat them up on nymphs before maybe an evening hatch.  Perhaps because the water had gotten warm in the thunderstorms, fish seem to have pushed back a bit into deeper water, instead.  The water temp had also dropped several degrees in a day or two, so it was a bit challenging on the nymph.  Many short hits and fish getting off after half-hearted takes.  It was possible they weren’t seeing my offerings well, so I tried a bunch of likely nymphs, while also noting a few caddis and olives in the air, so not straying too far away from the naturals or resorting to worms (I thought about it, perhaps even out loud).  

Doesn't take much cover...

We ran into a dude in one hole near where we wanted to end up for the evening, so I pitched rigging with Eric’s sculpin and just working our way back to the parking spot.  That was the ticket, for action anyway.  We landed a good number of small fish and stung or moved a few better ones—in my case, one much better that I must have thought was a snag while jigging and tightlining the sculpin not swinging it.  I did land one about 9 inches and, just before dark, a skinny 12-incher, and Tom had a couple in that 9 to 10 inch range, so Valley-decent fish.  Not the night it could have been, at least on paper, but I was happy to get out, fish, and socialize for a few hours with a buddy.  I am hoping Sunday is another window to get out, at least for a few hours in the morning, and I'm going somewhere more fun next week, like west or north a few hours.  With the cool week ahead and the recent rains, I will not be alone, but the right stream selection might go a long way, I hope.  Time to do some more homework.