September 29, 2024 – A Coyote Sighting Portends a Solid Dinkfest? – NEPA

Pretty early.

The rain has done nothing of note.  It’s been three or four days (and counting) of mist for all of a quarter of an inch of precipitation.  Still, the clouds offered the potential for some decent fishing and probably contributed to a coyote feeling safe enough to venture down for a drink well after sunrise.  Different Native American tribes ascribe different meanings to coyote sightings, and I choose not to google what tribes frequented Monroe County and how they felt about coyotes.  For me, it meant a strong showing of small to average wild browns and nary a rainbow.  It’s been a tough summer with heat and low water, so I was not all that surprised to find the better browns absent—they typically know where to go to ride out the tough months.  No surprise the less experienced rainbows have probably gone belly up.  Fallguys and bass could be seen everywhere in the low water as well.  In other words, it was a bit early for a potential fall bonanza to begin.  But in looking over the blog for the last several years, I see I am always drawn back to the mighty Brodhead—mighty or not—each September.  It did not disappoint this morning, really.  I packed up to fish a small creek last night, hopeful for some actual rain, and then retooled in the morning since the bigger creeks seemed like the only viable options.  Making this early morning change of plans, I probably caught over a dozen wild browns, half a dozen fallfish, and dropped a couple fish later in the morning when they were spookier and hitting faintly. And I had my first daytime coyote sighting.  He came down to the edge of the water not 20 yards away, took a drink, saw me, and hightailed it out of the gorge with barely a sniff of the air.  He vocalized high up on the ridge 10-15 minutes later, likely in response to some hikers or mountain bikers with a dog across the way.

A lot of fish but nothing too large.

I had a decent fish on the second cast of the morning, and about 8 fish followed in short succession.  Flows were around 100 CFS in a stretch of the river where that is really, really low, but I still needed a size 12 perdigon with a 4 mm tungsten bead to get a size 16 CDC soft hackle in the strike zone.  I would say that before 10 AM, 99% of the fish took the dropper tag riding a good 24 inches above the point fly.  Later, as the drizzle ended and it brightened, I had a few take the perdigon as well as a small jigged bugger.  I lost the trout half of a double on the jigged bugger not long after my coyote sighting.  I thought I finally had a decent fish on the line, especially since I was near the sometimes-home of a couple pig wild browns, including one pushing 24 inches, but it was a skinny 13 incher who swam one way with my bugger while a 12-inch fallguy swam the other with my soft hackle.  I landed the fallfish, of course.  Getting away from the deep riffles and bouncy water meant fish spookings and fallfish, so I worked through the same riffle twice and landed fish both times before taking a longer walk to a similar stretch upstream.  I did not venture further into the gorge, seeing little evidence in the fish behavior or conditions to indicate that today was worth the effort.  Save it for later in October, I thought to myself as I refueled at the ‘Ru and walked to the next spot.

Low water and in the low 60s.  Need rain and cooler temps.

After the first hour, all the fish were a bit pecky.  Sometimes low pressure does that to fish in my experience.  If the water is up and stained, that oft-times trumps any of the effects, but if it’s just foggy and calm and thick, the fish do act a bit like wet sponges.  I lost a couple on the bobber that just barely took the bugs suspended underneath.  I lost two back-to-back in the second deep run before catching a couple and then blowing up the hole with all the activity.  Since this hole is probably six feet deep (and crystal clear today), I even tried to balance a leech over their heads for a while.  Not a touch.  I should have led with that approach if I had wanted to give it a fair shot for success.  It was cool and not that drizzly around midday, so I overstayed my welcome, knowing full well that the bite was probably over an hour earlier.  It is nice to get a full six hours on the water, however.  That is not something that can be done during the summer grind.  With the heat last Sunday, I drove two hours to fish four hours, to drive two more hours.  Not great math, unless I tangle with a couple of pigs like last week.  Today I drove 90 minutes to fish 6 hours: far better math even if I caught most of the 15 fish before 11 AM and spent the rest of the time hoping for an eleventh hour, coyote sighting induced miracle.

At least there were a lot of them.