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| One dude, two hats + hmm... leafy. |
The Silver Fox has off this week, and I only had Monday
free, so we made the most of an iffy weather day in NEPA today. With nary a raindrop in sight for what feels
like ages, I slept in both Saturday and Sunday mornings this weekend. I was tracking better flows in central PA,
but I didn’t have it in me to make the long drive, I guess, especially not
twice in two or three days. Instead, I took
care of some things around the house and saved my energy for Monday with
Tom. I was encouraged when I saw a dam
release on the Lehigh River this weekend and thought we might have a shot at
some eager fish closer to home as a potential alternative. Besides a half a dozen fallfish, “some” fish disappointingly
meant a total of five average browns for me, and a goose egg for Tom. It was warm and humid at first light with the
weather carrying over from the weekend, but we fished through the arrival of
the cold front. That change came with
falling temperatures, winds, a barometric change, and the best part of fall
fishing in the wind, the leaf hatch. For
what it was worth, there was plenty of actual bug life, including caddis in two
sizes, and even a smattering of olives—who sometimes like to choose nasty days
to hatch. None of these bugs seemed to
interest the trouts all that much. Slow
and low, including two of my five fish coming on a big bug dredged under a
bobber and 8 feet of 4X tippet, was the name of the game. Not awesome, but it was a good social trip
with Tom and, like our summer trip that was equally middling, an excuse for me
to have a planned day out of the office.
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| Pretty fall-ish and blustery by late morning. |
I avoided the first cast curse by logging a first cast
snag. I lost it all, including the
aforementioned 8 feet of 4X fluorocarbon, due to a terribly tied knot at the
tippet ring. I caught a good 13 inch fish after rerigging, so technically my second cast of the morning. And I actually got back all the tippet and
two bugs a few minutes later when I snagged my own long-ass tippet and freed all
of it. Had I one of those handy rigging
spools, I could have just wrapped the whole jawn up and been ready with a super-quick
rerig following the inevitable future snag.
Instead, I clipped off the bugs and saved the tippet for some dropper
tags later in the morning. I mentioned
the two bobber fish, well the others took a perdigon or a jigged bugger deep
and near the bottom on a tight line.
Despite the presence of caddis, nothing took the dropper tag like they
did on my last visit. Speaking of which,
I usually don’t like to double down on the same watershed, let alone nearly the
same spot, but this drought is playing havoc with my fishing plans. Before seeing the detailed Monday forecast, Tom and I
were slated to drive out to Central PA, but with this front I figured our time
would be better spent fishing the early morning window before the major weather
change—a change that was happening west to east too, mind you. Besides a couple trout, I did catch a solid
fall fish bite before the weather changed, so there was that part of the plan
that worked out, I suppose....
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| I caught some wild trouts (and likely one holdover top left). |
Tom is not accustomed to fishing big water like this, so I
let him figure it out for a while before sharing that he was probably two feet
short on tippet length and way light on tungsten for a day where the fish were
just hugging bottom. He had some hits
that probably surprised him (a couple of mine did to be honest) after long
lulls in the action. None of the trout
were dinks that I did land, but none of them were likely much over 12 inches either, and
the first fish may have even been a long time holdover, not even a wild
boy. I made some bug changes when the
leaf hatch began in earnest, going for the big old isonychia or stonefly
approach in the underwater leaf storm over leaving (get it) it up to the trouts
to pick out an 18 or 20 caddis pupa down there.
The water was a bit stained from the release, even though the flows were
still very wadable and had dropped back to normal by the time we arrived.
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| Bonus shot. Some fall colors. |
We quit the first spot before 10 AM to hike by the ‘Ru on the way to a second spot. To give you an
idea of how not nice it was, we were still the only vehicle in a usually quite
busy lot. By noon when we returned, it
was bumping like usual, but I have never seen the lot empty on a late morning
in the early fall. I refused to believe
we could not catch a trout at the second spot.
I even sat out and coached Tom for some time before giving it a shot
myself. I eventually dredged up a couple
fallfish in a row on a size 8 jigged pheasant tail, a single heavy bug made
heavier with even more weight added and one that may have said iso nymph to the
residents because I finally caught my fifth and final trout with this
cumbersome rig. We could not get Tom on
one even with the same bug and the same weight.
Instead, he lost it all in some random encounter with the elements. On that note, we were done. I am going to see the mitch again on Friday
when we join a crew of aging hipsters for a drinking and eating weekend in
Asbury Park. I will bring a rod, especially
with this cool week ahead, hoping to blind squirrel one of those cows that are
the first to begin migrating south. I
will take a bluefish or two on a pencil popper, of course.
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