May 22, 2022 – Wet Wading Our Way to Well Over 50 Trouts – SEPA Blueline

A great small stream fish on a greater day.

It was a hot one on Saturday, but I guess the pattern started with the low coming in on Friday afternoon as I was leaving NEPA.  Eric had not been out in weeks with his work in full swing and family commitments, so he was chomping at the bit to go today.  Part of me was worried that the bite would be off, and part of me was convinced that by day two of this weird front, fish would be eating.  They were.  In fact, it was silly.  It was hot, but Eric and I were wet wading in May at 6:30 AM, and the flows were good from the previous rain and plenty cool.  As I speculated in Friday’s post, I had to have pissed 10 times while I was there, but I was hydrated, I guess!  One of my seasonal allergy meds is a diuretic too, I swear, so I had pre-hydrated all morning, expecting it to be hot and humid by 9 AM.  Because of the tree cover, some clouds, and good water temps, it was not uncomfortable fishing by any means.  More importantly, the fish were in prime condition, fat and colored up and with no quit in them.  We encountered a few year classes, but the most fun was a good showing of fish in the 11 to 13 inch range.  These fish may have been the dominant class of 8 or 9 inchers last year, but they are very mature right now.  One of Eric’s males today looked like a mini-football he was so thick in the middle and pointy on both ends.  It was like he skipped puberty at 12 inches and went right to full grown adult.

Little footballs, spring green, up up and away?

For a while, it felt like those larger small stream fish were dominating the numbers, but it all seemed to even out by the end.  However, the numbers we put up in about 6 hours of fishing were impressive and impossible to count.  We both fished a dry dropper most of the day, but we carried the nymphing rods, and I did fish with my long rod for the last hour and caught just as many fish as I would have with the dry dropper, perhaps more in the deeper holes where I picked up the longer rod. Twice for curiosity-sake I counted fish at just one stop, and I landed 6 one time and 8 another.  And that was just me, and we had a steady pick in between known honey holes.  With the warm up, they were already spread out in shallow riffles and runs, along with the bouncier holes.  The flat water was a bit chubbed up, and some of them were even rising to midges or really small olives, which we saw maybe two of today.

That simple buggy bug.

Overall, though, the bug life was quiet today.  There have been days and evenings of black caddis, for sure, as they were in every bush and on every tree branch.  I also saw a march brown or two and even a couple sulfurs.  We keep saying we ought to sneak over here in the evening, but life gets in the way.  Because of the dark caddis everywhere, I was cleaning up with a small darkly colored CDC blowtorch.  It was a convincing enough choice that even Eric elected to take not one but also a second when he eventually broke the first off.  For a guy who loves to catch fish on his own bugs, that is saying something, but some of the fish were nearly choking the fuzzy little size 16 bug.

Some fish pics.  Eric let me stick a few nicer ones!

Besides baby Thor, Eric caught another long and beautiful hen, and there were many exceptional fish today.  I only took representative pictures because the aforementioned volume of fish and because I was carrying the phone in my sling pack since I was wet wading and in a t-shirt.  First I got tired of netting fish, and then I got tired of even thinking about a photograph.  Not bad problems to have, of course.  I had a couple surprises that had me thinking much bigger fish until they revealed themselves after the requisite dig for cover or bottom.  One was a 14-inch holdover brown, I believe.  We have never caught a stocked brown in here, but one thing about stockies is never say never.  It had no eye spot and a jaw that looked like it had seen a spinner or two.  Eric caught a small rainbow that looked really good, too good, but then I caught a much bigger rainbow that looked even better, so both probably washed out of club-stocked tributary or moved up from below somewhere or, as I alluded above, got in there by stocker magic.  Both had me fooled for a minute because of how well they accounted for themselves in the perfect water temps—living with the wild fish had been good for these three interlopers.

The wanderers, Eric early AM.

We were going to push further on at the usual turnaround point, but by then the sun was pretty hot and we figured we would be working harder for diminishing returns, at least until the evening, and we did not have that kind of time today.  We did fish a few spots on the way back, as we often do, but today was a notch more productive than the usual.  Eric landed another nice 10-inch fish that he moved the first time through, and he jumped another fish that looked bigger than that—he may have miffed on this one on the way up.  I also took another solid fish out of a deep log jam with the long rod.  I had fished this hole with the dry dropper the first time, and I caught some fish, but I knew nymphing deep was probably the call, even though I had already stuck the big pretty bow and a few other browns here patiently letting the dry dropper do its thing.  

More trouts.  I am not saying 60+ fish because someone might cry bull, but...

I think we continued with the dry dropper for the change of pace and the visual good times provided to the spectator.  Nymphing might have been as effective in many spots, but not all of them, but because so many fish were eating, we hardly switched up approaches like we thought me might.  I was also hoping for a hatch that never happened, the real reason to caddy four rods all day!  Still, there was little room for improvement on a day of 50+ fish, many of them solid small stream trouts.  Eric even had two or three fish, including one of his better ones, take a big stimulator on the surface.  Good times, good times.

Eric's stimmy eating hen.  Showing off at that point!  Another pretty b-reel fish.