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| A spa day? |
Brian sent me a pin last week, a legal parking spot on a stretch of unposted river that he and I had not yet fished together. I knew my son had to work on Father’s Day, and I was not in the mood to visit my old man’s grave on what is supposed to be a happy day in my book. One thing that makes me happy is fishing, right? Not that I want it to be some new tradition, but I think I did this last year, too. I likened it to a spa day on Mother’s Day, except my spa day started with me getting on the road at 4 AM and quitting the beautiful but warm day by 10 AM. Four hours was just enough to cover this beat, which I covered pretty quickly in the low water. There was a lot of low, dead water, and where there was depth in places, it was often frog water—I literally spooked a dozen frogs on Friday on a similarly low Lehigh River. I knew from the gage that it would be low, like really low, but I knew from my visit to this area last Tuesday that the water temperature would be fine. I was right on both accounts. I did catch at least 25 trouts, however. Like Friday, most of them were juveniles, maybe even a couple of fingerlings. The two best fish were stocker rainbows, but they were ornery and acrobatic. And I did catch a couple adult browns in the places I knew had to be prime spots in better conditions. Low water is a great time to explore, so I explored, but I did not take the excursion too seriously or move to a second location when I reached a logical end of the line. It was just a relaxing walk on the creek with a fishing rod with enough cooperative fish to be more than a hike.
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| A few adults cooperated. |
After parking, I hiked a deer trail downstream for about 10 minutes until I ran into frog water. I could have gone further, and Brian shared a landmark in his text last week that would be a good place to start if I wanted more water to explore. I have done this enough to know that the beat I had before me would be more than enough to have a morning. I moved faster than I imagined, but I also spent time in the few prime spots picking through dinkers to find a handful of adults, including the holdover rainbows. Small bugs was the order of the day. This creek does not have a lot of bug life, but midges were heavy in a few riffle-ly sections. Most of the trout ate an olive perdigon on the anchor or a caddis larva, but an equal number took a small CDC dropper tag too. I had to fish upstream and far away from myself, and yet I am sure I still spooked a couple fish in the deeper water below riffles and runs. It might have been a day to toss a terrestrial into the deeper slack water from a distance, but it was chilly to start, so bugs may not move around until 10 AM when the day starts in the 50s. My compromise was to toss a streamer at wood in some of those spots. The streamer was a chub magnet, so every fish eats every other fish in this rather infertile place, which explains how plump some fish get.
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| More fishes. |
As noted, there were definitely some sexy looking holes along the way, and it was good to see the slower deep areas in low water. Some of the deep stretches would be chest high in normal flows, and some had undercut banks and wood, so there are not just little browns living here. But today was the day for the little browns to feast on midges, I suppose. I got so many pecks and short hits, and I yanked a few little fingerlings skyward on the hookset. In shallow riffles, reaction time has to be fast, which sometimes means a bit too much muscle by accident. All it takes is not setting hard on a good fish to lose it, and I have learned that the hard way over the years. I was hoping a rainbow in the mid-teens was one such fish worth the hookset, but she jumped within seconds of being hooked and jumped at least three more times just to make it clear she was not an equal-sized wild brown. The best wild fish was likely 10 or 11 inches and fought well too. It was good to see a new stretch of creek and have some success despite unfavorable conditions. It was a perfect day for a exploratory walk. I have had worse Father’s Days!
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| A few prime spots held fish that weren't 2 years old. A fine morning for some exploring. |
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