September 3 and 5, 2021 – Some Small Stream Sneaking (and a Pig) Post-Ida – A Couple SEPA Cricks

Only 18+ inches long, but quite the porker, especially for a tiny freestone creek!

After the second flooding tropical storm in a very short span, I didn’t have many options on Friday—I guess I could have wet a line in the Vine Street Expressway in Philly, which had become a canal after the remnants of Ida.  A category 3 tornado ripped through my area, just two miles away.  We got the “take shelter” warnings and were hunkered in an interior hallway but were spared even a power outage this time.  My busy fall starts on September 7, so I wanted to use the time this week to fish, even reached out to Sam about meeting up in State College, but it was not in the cards.  Just to get out and enjoy the cool post-storm/fall-preview weather, I decided to fish a couple spots on Valley that are about at the upper reaches of fishable headwaters.  My expectations were low, and I was content to do some first-hand storm assessment instead.  I was not alone, spooking an owl, a big fox, and nearly stepping on a snapping turtle.  A spinner fisherman and I spooked each other.  Those creatures survived, so hopefully the fish did too. 

Hopefully, Valley can maintain its reputation for resilience.

I had an LDR (long-distance release) on two decent-sized trout, but I did not see many others.  The CDC jig I was throwing had a dull hook, I determined after the second one got off…  I had selected it from my working/drying box early in the morning and did not notice that it may have taken some abuse on my last trip.  I was not expecting much, anyway.  The creek is messed up bad between the headwaters and the sections fished most often.  Gravel and rubble is pushed into many of my favorite holes, scoured to the bedrock in some spots, banks compromised, and there are new long muddy straightaways.  We will need a few storms, normal ones, to clean out the muddy spots and maybe dig out some depth in the old holes that are filled with gravel and rubble.  I visited a second spot upstream and the creek was in better shape because the wetlands around the streambed absorbed a lot of the water.  It was late, maybe 11 AM when I stopped here, but I had two small browns poke a dry dropper, so there are confirmed survivors here too. 

Some rain and damage (not pictured) here too, but far better luck!

Tom and I checked out another small creek further north and west this Sunday morning.  There was massive damage here too, and evidence of major flooding, but many fish were landed in the remaining, intact spots, including the pig that opens this blog post.  We got rained on for 5 hours straight with a weak cold front coming through, but the creek held its color enough to dry dropper them until mid-day, when they refused to rise anymore.  On a solo trip about 18 months ago to this creek, Tom’s old brookie trickle that has become more and more a brown trout creek over the years, he sent me blurry, incomplete photos of a big small stream brown that choked a chubby.   An elusive 12 inch brookie has not yet been located, but in the past we have found a couple 10 inchers.  Today, the best brook trout were a couple 7-7.5 inch hens full of future gemmies, but I got my own chance to land a small stream beast brown, a veritable unicorn in a creek this small.

We did it all for the brookie, the brookie...

The spawn is some time away, but the water was 58 degrees after the cold nights this week—pretty perfect brookie temps.  Browns liked them too, of course.  Before the whopper, Tom had an 10 inch hen brown miss the chubby, then take the dropper a cast later.  She was fat and perfect.  As I mentioned, the dry fly bite was on for about three hours of the five we fished.  Most took the big attractors we were tossing, especially if the first toss landed in the intended sweet spot—those soft spots close to current and cover.  After the dry fly bite slowed, a few ate my size 16 CDC red tag fly dropper.  I even tried a bugger for a while, and I think Tom did too.  With high flows, some of the plunges where we often land fish were not in dry dropper condition—too much white water.    There were places where this creek has spread into three and four sub-channels, which might be good for predators but probably not for the trout, so I hope they find their way back to these more consistent fish-holding spots as the waters recede.  I will probably grow tired of seeing all the alterations on all my fishing spots this month (and you may grow tired of me talking about them).  Popping the bugger through the heavy water into the deeper spots netted no fish today, but it was worth a try, as the fish probably pushed up close to these obstructions to ride out the storms.  

Over 7 inches in the measure net, which came out today.

Speaking of obstructions, onto the pig story: We have stopped at the spot where the pig came from a half a dozen times or more.  Never even a small fish despite being a prime lair, which can mean an especially big and mean one lives there, so I keep trying.  I have spots like this at every creek I frequent (and this one on Tom’s creek!) and I have had enough payoff on the right day and conditions to warrant always giving them an honest shot.  Tom was up to bat, but he said go for it today.  His reaction when I hooked the big male was, That’s my fish! not meaning, I should have caught that one, but meaning that’s the one I caught last year!  I dropped the dry fly in a soft spot to give the dropper a chance to sink before it got sucked into the swift current than runs by this deep, woody, and narrow plunge just above a culvert.  It was not his fish.  In fact his may have been a mature old female based on the photos he shared and re-shared yesterday, so there are at least a couple pigs in this tiny crick (it is not even a rod length wide in some spots, so truly tiny not hyperbole).

Some of the browns, including a couple shots of Tom's plump, healthy hen.

We don’t know from exactly where these fish move up, but there are a couple plausible theories.  The creek is not dammed and does join a larger creek.  There is also one deep spot that is impassable except in high, high water, like this week, so maybe this fish was new here or maybe he’s been here for years.  Tom’s was below this impoundment feature, so I am not sure they will make a love match unless we get a third superstorm this year.  Mine was a huge fish for being 18 inches long.  It was a big male that had probably reached his lateral growth potential.  I brought the measure net for shits and giggles, hoping to tape and quantify a big brookie.  It was not the tool to land such a beast in tight quarters, but I did get a measure on him!  I tied good knots and made no mistakes fighting the fish, but I got a little lucky, as I was fishing 6X on the dropper, my drag was not set for any runs, and the fish and I were between a mess of wood and the unknowns of the culvert but 10 feet downstream.  

A lot of pics in 60 seconds with two cameras going, I guess!

I just kept side pressure on him when he tried to bury himself in the wood he skulked out of to take the fly.  I stripped the fly line in until I had nothing but 9 feet of leader between us and just kept steady pressure with the line locked between my hand and the cork of the reel handle until I was able to slide him into the net—from the very culvert I was trying to keep him out of, of course!  I snapped a few shots, Tom took a few from higher on the opposite bank, and then I released him into a deep, quiet pocket above the culvert so he could rest up.  He sat there a minute while we watched him, and I guess the moment we stopped looking, he slid back under the bridge or back to his lair.  Just an awesome fish and a great morning.

The Silver Fox modeling wet garments for me.