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| Not the one. |
Well, we had
some rain that moved the needle on the gages, but we also had more cold
temperatures and wind, so this spring continues to be a puzzle. I have yet to have a great day, and I know I
am not alone based on the feedback from fishing buddies and the chatter on the
forums. The aquatic insects have their
own timetables, however, so the grannom caddis are getting active across the state,
including in NEPA where I fished this morning.
The mayflies are there too. I
fondly remember dry fly fishing during the opening week of trout season when I
was not even a high schooler. These were
Potter and Lycoming County Aprils too, but on the odd years with low water
conditions, the kind of springs that actually give you a shot at dry fly
fishing larger creeks this early in the spring.
I was hoping for the low water on the bigger cricks this year to allow
for some of those dry fly days that are not a given in early- and mid-April. It may still happen, as a pulse of rain does
not erase months of dry weather. Today,
the creek was just a bit too high to get fish up taking dries, but they rarely
ignore a swarm of caddis emerging in such force. They at least take the pupa and nymphs in the
riffles. I got a couple average fish in
the riffles during this prolonged and significant hatch, but the others were dredged
up with a bobber in deep wintering holes with very little current. The best fish was a solid fish, but I had
been out since 7 AM looking for the one on a creek that has given me many big
fish over the years. I fished well, at
least for the first 3 hours, and kept expecting it to happen, and then it just
didn’t.
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| A bit cold, but it certainly looked sexy enough to keep me optimistic. |
I got to cover a lot of water because the air was too cold and the water
too high for most mitches this morning. Noon
brought out a handful of other anglers, but by then I was pretty much camped
out in a prime hole waiting for some signs that the fish were excited by the
grannoms crawling all over me. Instead,
I landed 6 trout in 5 hours, and I had to fish a known stocker hole to get on
the board. I put in 90 minutes early,
just after sunrise, with a jig streamer and even a big stonefly and did not get a touch in some great spots. On a
drive to another stretch, I decided to stop at the stocker hole to get the
monkey off my back. I got one rainbow
and left because I still believed that something was going to happen
today. Had the stockers made it easy, it
may have been stocker day, but they too were sluggish in the cold, high
flows. I finally gave up on the idea of
a pig, or even a dozen wild browns on dries or by swinging caddis pupa, at about 1
PM when the wind started pumping at a steady 15 mph with higher gusts here and there. Had the grannoms not been so thick and the
general personality of the browns in three different beats not been so dickish, the
plan was to hit the headwaters of this crick and pick through some stockers for
a mess of small wild browns. Knowing I
would be protected from the wind up yonder, I still debated leaving on the
waders for one last drive. Instead, I decided to conserve
my energy and my optimism for another day.
It’s going to happen one of these days, so no use draining my battery on
a day that was destined to disappoint from the start. Stay tuned?
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| Also not the one, but half a dozen trout is better than a skunking, which felt possible early. |
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