July 29, 2021 – Just Keeping Sharp, I Suppose – Wissahickon Creek

The mighty Wissy.

Unless I sneak out on Saturday morning, I may have ended the month of July the same way I began, chasing the local smallmouth on the Wissy.  I didn’t leave the house until after 2:30 PM, but I was lucky enough to fish a solid four productive hours, I bet.  It was humid but cloudy all day, and I thought I was racing the possibility of more severe weather coming later in the afternoon.  Speaking of which, that was one reason I had not been out in eight days: We got spanked by that ice storm last week.  We lost power from Wednesday around 3 PM until Friday after 7 PM, and we only got a temporary fix until Monday, so we still had brown outs all weekend.  We were luckier than some in our neighborhood who were not restored for another 24 hours after us, and when PECO applied the final fix on Monday, we only lost power for another 6 hours, maybe.  I am in a tree-y area, so we have had worse, and no one was hurt.  Only one home had a tree on it, but the same tree took out a porch and an above ground pool too.  Good times.  I had big limbs everywhere, so I am still working on the cleanup around trying to teach and take a class online (without power those days).  Thank goodness for Mom’s place and free WiFi!  I needed a break today, but it was after lunch before I realized it, so I decided to try another spot on the Wissy, this time with micro jigged streamers on my 10’6”.  Instead of swinging a bugger like last time, I would keep my trout skills sharp?

Jigged sculpin, then junk flies, then jigged sculpin.

The water was pretty low and clear, but because of the threat of weather, the crowds were small, so I had one less thing to worry about spooking the fish.  Actually, the Park has taken proactive steps to curb the swimming after last year’s destruction of the hot spot swimming holes—people coming from as far as Central Jersey to swim and party.  There were new signs up everywhere about swimming, even swim attire, and for the first time in years, I saw a park ranger camped out in a vehicle on the drive.  There were still plenty of dog-worn beaches, so still a “loved” City park with erosion problems, but if I squint, especially in this section, I feel like I am in the woods.  I am sure the Friends have been active helping this summer too, but lease laws, for example, are really not treated as laws, so they can only educate.  Besides the normal wear and tear, the park seemed rather spared by the storms, and my spots still looked like my spots!  I had some follows and some sunfish and very dinky bass, but in order to hook up in that mid-afternoon lull, I eventually had to tighline some junk flies in the prime deep pockets near oxygenated water.  I started catching ‘gills, ‘seeds, redbreasts, and some plump goggle eyes, but the bass did finally come.  When I got into some prime spots, I put the jigged sculpin back on, and ended the night with more small bass than I could count.

Not big but aggressive and enough to put a bend in the nymphing taper.

The best did not come out of hiding until after 6:30 PM, and the biggest was only 9 inches long, but after at least a couple dozen at 6 and under, they were fun on the light taper of my nymphing rod.  Fish were hanging about where I would expect June holdover trout, perhaps in water a hair softer, but they would swing out and chase aggressively if they (or I) missed the hook up on the hop downstream.  I even caught a few on the swing under wood and undercuts, but if the cast landed too soft, a sunfish was on it instead, so the swings could not be all that long.  Eric’s jig got a lot of love, so I tried to swing a bigger sculpin in a few deep holes, but that resulted only in tail nips from sunnies and YOY.  Even though I was tighlining with nymphing line in theory, my index and curse fingers would indicate that I did enough traditional streamer fishing to create those telltale line cuts—90 percent humidity on wet hands probably didn’t help.  

A pretty one on the jigged sculpin.

I got rained on lightly a few times, and it got darker earlier than normal, but the storms stayed away.  That was good and bad.  I didn’t get wet, but the local streams didn’t get enough water to urge me to set the alarm for Friday morning either.  I saw a few short spikes on some Lehigh Valley gages, but the front was scattered and not all that wide.  In other words, it was probably not the one we needed but thankfully not another one like last week.  We got lucky with moderate temps and humidity this time last week, so being without power was bearable, but that kind of weather is a tall order to duplicate, especially in August.  Not sure what to do or where to go this weekend, which is not a good sign, but I would like to get out somewhere, so let’s see what happens….