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| An early start, but not as Eric would have liked ;) |
Experiencing
the below-average cold since November, it took some degree of faith to imagine getting
on the board this early in January. This
morning was the conclusion (maybe crescendo) of a three-day span approaching or
breaking 50 F, so it actually could have happened earlier had I the time off earlier
in the previous week. But it happened, and I am
grateful and now more hopeful for the rest of the winter. Eric and I could not have asked for much
more: the aforementioned three days of mild weather, rain the day before, no
wind until the next front came through about noon. Minus all but a smattering of midges in terms
of bug life, it was damn near perfect on paper, and the morning ended up
fulfilling all the potential promise and more.
Always overeager after a long absence from the game, Eric convinced me
to pick him up at 7 AM. He probably
would have preferred 6 AM, so we were fishing at sunrise, but I reigned him in
a bit. Three days of milder temperatures
was not going to undo totally a few weeks of frigid evenings on a mostly-freestone
crick. I understood his enthusiasm and was
looking forward to a fishing day with a mitch, but I definitely wanted to
optimize our window: early enough to beat the next weather change, but late
enough that it was more than casting practice for two hours before fish warmed
up. As expected, we had a slower start
even at the 8 AM start time, but Eric did get an average fish to eat before 9
AM, and I had one fish nip but not connect on a bugger in the first hour, so
not completely dead.
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| A good one for Eric as good things starting happening. |
We both began fishing
jigged buggers because of the perceived stain in the low morning light, but with
the presence of some midges hatching and the increased daylight revealing
better than expected visibility, I actually took a couple minutes to rerig with
small nymphs when we got to our first confidence hole. I was up for this hole, but I gave a mitch the
go ahead. While I was rigging up a
perdigon and a small midge dropper, Eric quickly picked up two more fish from the same
hole on the bugger—making me doubt my decision, of course! I left the nymphs on, however, and finally
landed a rather decent fish on the perdigon after getting popped one other time
in the next hole. Proving to myself that
fish would hit nymphs and/or were aware of the sparse hatch, I quickly retied with
4x and my original choice of jigged bugger.
I am no dummy! It was the right
call because Eric’s next at bat scored a beauty of a wild brown. It was probably 14 inches but also a fully
mature, colored-up, post-spawn male with some war wounds—just a great fish and
a day maker on this crick.
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| I started pulling my weight and Eric continued to catch exceptionally pretty trouts. |
I got first shot
at the next honey hole, which did not disappoint. Just as my jigged bugger left the head riffle
and plunged into the deep hole, it was met on the fall by our second good fish
of the morning. We made a few additional
casts, but we decided to rest both of these holes after causing a ruckus and chose
to keep moving. Fish we active, and in
the winter (plus with an approaching front), we did not know when our luck
would run out. The window is sometimes short,
but luckily it had not closed on us just yet.
Eric landed another beautiful fish at our next stop. This one had a unique pattern for this crick,
a real sparsely spotted, deep hued fish, more like the so-called Loch Leven
browns. The next two holes that usually produce
for us this time of year did not. The
weather was changing. Even though we were
well protected at the time, we could hear the wind already messing with the
tops of trees. We both figured we had
better return to the two deep holes that produced the better fish before our
window closed for the day. As we headed
back downstream, a dude out working on his truck asked if we had permission to
fish here. We do, and Eric dropped the
name of the landowner. Dude was cool
with that, but we both had a sense we might see the landowner today. Honestly, we were both glad that dude asked
because he probably deters trespassers with his vigilance. For years, we have seen no one back here, but
in recent years we started noticing bobbers and flies in trees despite obvious
posted signs. It was also probably a
good thing if we encountered the landowner today—Eric last spoke to him a couple
years ago, so it was not a bad time for a check-in with him.
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| My best fish of the morning. |
The return trip
to the hole where I got my good fish was more than fruitful. I may have landed a fish as solid as Eric’s if
not our best fish of the morning. They
were both from the same year class, male, mature, post-spawn fish, still toothy
and colored-up. A good day had just
become an exceptional one, especially for January. As Eric readied to fish his honey hole again,
hoping to repeat my good fortune, we heard the ATV engine in the woods. Sure enough, a quad was coming down the trail
towards us. It was the landowner’s son. We knew he hunted the land quite a bit, but
we had never met him since we tend to avoid interfering with hunting season
back here. In fact, we were fishing
today, a Sunday, because Sunday hunting was closed again. The son was cool and knew Eric’s family name,
as they both grew up here. It was
actually better that we met the young son and not the father because Eric was able
to exchange numbers, offering to text the son when we were going to fish and
also report any trespassers. It was dude
working on the truck who called in the landowner’s son, so that idea was
well-received. I guess we are part of
the “if you see something say something” team now? Someday this will all be townhouses or worse,
but for the time being, we have the next generation’s contact information, and
he loves the outdoors. A good end to a good day.
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| Winter small stream sneaking at its best. |
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