April 20, 2018 – From (Good) Stickman to Stockie (Chaser)??? – An Older Man Visits a SEPA Crick

Windy, chilly, and stocky continues this week.

When I graduated high school, I was nearly 5’11” and only 160 pounds, but I had been even skinnier than that most of my life.  As a result, my dad called me Stickman or just plain Stick, which I have been thinking about lately because “a good stick” has become hip language to describe someone who fishes well with the long rod.  By the time I reached my first winter break of college, my friends and family were shocked at what 20, then 30 pounds (now 45-ish pounds) can do to change the Stickman image.  The same is true for spending too much time with stocked trout this week!  I hope I am not losing my edge, as I stuck a dozen stocked trout on the Manny this afternoon, but I missed 3 in a row in the last hole I fished, a hole that I know holds some of the only wild fish in this section of creek.  Today is my birthday, so the reminiscing that goes along with turning 49 also likely contributed to me considering that name Stickman.  I spent the better part of the morning, one that began at 5:30 AM with a 49 year old’s bladder calling, grading papers and fielding questions from my students.  By noon, I couldn’t do it anymore, and I couldn’t stomach the Wissy again, so I decided to take the ride to Berks County for a change of scenery.  I would catch stocked trout in bucolic farmland not urban or suburban parks, but I would also have at least a chance at some wild fish in a few spots.

The little pt dropper worked on a little better looking stockies

Some holes near the parking spot came up empty for me, but I did find half a dozen nice looking stocked browns a little ways upstream from the easy access.  The flows were still great from the previous weekend storm, so while clear to slightly stained, there was also sufficient water in all the holes and runs to cover my approach on a wild fish or two if I got the chance.  On the way upstream, I found a few more bows and browns here and there, dropping one or two, as well.  I only had a small window to fish, as we had plans to go have a birthday dinner as a family after the boy got home from school and my wife from work, so I was in a bit of a rush when I reached my final destination on this stretch of the creek.  I should have been concentrating, not rushing, on this particular hole because bugs were hatching, and I saw a couple fish suspended in the water column actively feeding.   I had seen no other fisherman today, so no one had likely spooked this potential honey hole, either.  I crept into place and delivered a couple gentle casts with small tungsten pheasant tail and a walt’s worm dropper, which had scored most of my other fish.

A better looking one, maybe even a holdover, but still a stocked fish..

The Stickman (now stockie with age) hooked and dropped three in as many casts as the alarm on my phone was going off, reminding me to head for home.  There are stockies in this hole too, but I was convinced that I had missed at least one decent wild trout this afternoon if not more.  I hope that I was just rushing (next time, I will hoof it up to this spot first and work back to the car!) and that I have not lost my quick hookset on the more forgiving stocked trout I have been targeting close to home.  With traffic and some drama at home with the boy, we also missed dinner plans, but we did eventually salvage things with some excellent fish tacos from the awesome Mexican place up the street.  It wasn’t a perfect birthday, but it was fitting for 49, I guess.  This time next year will be better, thinner, stronger, healthier, wilder, not slower and stockier, I hope?

Appreciate ya, and your are pretty cute for a stocked fish, but I think we need to take a break for a while.

April 19, 2018 – And on that Note… - A Short and Silly One on the Wissahickon

Double shot Tuesday on Thursday: who was more embarrassed, I wonder?

I needed a break from reading papers all morning (and last night), but I had to stay close to home, so I visited the Wissy in my neighborhood today from noon until about 2 PM, and I unwittingly happened upon another fresh stocking.  I looked up the date when I got home, and it was a couple days ago, so they weren’t so fresh that they weren’t hungry.  Needless to say, it was just silly, ending in a double—one on the dropper and one on the anchor fly.  The two browns were small enough and the distance between my dropper tag and the anchor fly far enough that I could net them both for what must have been an embarrassing photo shoot for them, I imagine.

A freshly stocked little piggy.

Parking was tough due to a construction crew taking over the lot, so I had to park above a popular bridge pool on a side street  I stopped at this popular bridge to test my tightline nymphing technique in flat deep water, and I landed about 6 rainbows before moving on to better water with less traffic and construction noise.  It was cold and drizzling, with a handful of harder showers mixed in, so I was the only stick on the crick besides a couple bait guys chilling in carp water with the buckets and the radio and such.

Most of the bows on the small dropper.

I found the motherlode of browns in another spot and stood waist deep in cold water in the rain until I had my fill of fish and the elements.  After taking a few on a tightline, I also scored a few more letting the flies swing, and I finally ended in true silly fashion by gently hopping my big jigged pheasant tail anchor fly in a deep eddie.  That yielded another handful before the double shot happened and I quit, perhaps as embarrassed as the two browns in the net, and headed for the gas fireplace and a cup of coffee with Lucy the cat. 

Just a lot of averaged sized browns on a cold, rainy day.

April 16 and 18, 2018 – A Lot of Rain - Putting the Social Net-Working in Social Networking – Reelin’ Ron Hits the Wissahickon with the Long Rod, Finally!

The Pride of Delco getting things accomplished with the tight line.

I fished with Ron for the first time today, but we actually hugged when we met at the stream this morning for a good day of chasing stockies on the Wissy.  I feel like I know the guy, and he probably feels the same way since he is undoubtedly one of the first followers of my blog here, and he predates that by a long time, as well.  We became acquainted through the Bass Barn, back when I was morphing once again from surf fisherman to trout fisherman to fly fisherman to surf fisherman to trout fisherman to fly fisherman, with detours in other species too.  I could just tell he was a good guy, and that was confirmed in person today.  He is recently retired as a middle school shop teacher, and has almost finished raising some adult kids, so he has more time on his hands now, which made it easier to finally meet and fish.  We are both educators who love to fish, and we both appreciate a good book—he is always quick with a nugget of fishing wisdom, knows A River Runs Through It is also a novel about addiction, for example—so what were the chances we would dislike each other, right?

Ron's stonefly worked as did the old tungsten pt and the walt's worm.

Based on the questions he has asked over the years, the right sort of questions that reveal experience on the water, I knew he could probably fish, and I was correct.  I took him for a walking tour of one of my favorite sections of my home creek, offered about 10 minutes total of advice on how to rig and fish a Czech nymphing system, and he quickly put some fish on the board.  He even caught all his fish on the flies he tied all winter, which is more than I can say for this lazy angler these days.  In addition to sharing a John Merwin edited collection of fishing quotations that will find a permanent home in my powder room, a place of respect, he even shared a couple of his streamers, made me a gourmet sandwich, and took a 5 wt combo off my hands to add to his arsenal of toys.

A handful of browns but mostly bows, 10 to 12 inches

I couldn’t accurately guess how many fish we caught, but it was a lot, especially a week after a stocking and another flood damaging storm, and I usually don’t take a lot of pictures when I am fishing with another angler, but it was a good day.  Ron has homework to do with his 10 foot 3 wt, but I think he left today with a lot more confidence in the tool, especially for the type of pocket water we targeted today, and I hope he gained a first-hand appreciation of the Mighty Wissy in Philadelphia, an oft-maligned and underappreciated crick that is at least a click or two above the average put and take urban stocked trout stream, at least on the beauty scale if not on the water quality meter! 

Valley was ugly, even on Monday afternoon....

After all that rain over the weekend, Valley was unfishable even at 3 PM the afternoon after (I did take a walk with the streamer rod on Monday, but knew it was a waste of time besides the walk in the woods, of course), but that also means flows should be good for a couple more days in the local creeks, and I will try again this week.  I also have tentative plans to fish the Lehigh River with another local guy, a new fishing contact, so I find myself very social these days?

April 12, 2018 – Tangled with a Unicorn, Settled for a Pig – SEPA

Redemption after a trying morning.

Call me Ralph.  I am a heaver.  I guess it’s the adrenaline, but when I used to run cross county in high school, play soccer, ask out the hottest girl in my Chem class, I would inevitably vomit or at least dry heave before and/or after the big event—not during, that I can recall.  I empathize with Stan from South Park and that high school speaker from Marjorie Douglas who vomited on live television—it could have been me.  My nerves can’t handle being so hype for so long, I suppose.  What does all this have to do with fishing, you may ask?  Man, I lost a huge wild brown yesterday, probably 5 inches longer than the one I taped and released later, pictured above.  I did everything right too!  I was set with both feet firmly planted, my sighter a straight line to my 5X tippet, good knots that held.  I reacted immediately to the slight pause in my drift.  I got a great hook set, fought the fish well, turning him from his sunken log cabin multiple times, keeping his nose out of the streambed stones where he could work my size 18 pt out of his jaws.  I even got my net out without losing focus on the fight at hand.  And what a fight it was!  For 24 inches, I bet, this fish was a leaper.  He tailed-walked all over the pool, even towards me at one point.  I will dream about this wide-bodied beast dancing on the surface of the creek for many years, I am afraid.  So what went wrong?  At the time, while sitting on the bank vomiting, I could not have told you.  In retrospect, however, I think I have figured it out.

If you fish barbless, you are probably well-accustomed to the flies coming out of the fish’s mouth in the net (and not).  It is quite common to land a fish in the net and find that he is already free and ready to be turned loose.  It must happen when the pressure is released.  When I got this fish’s front half into my inadequate net, I must have released the pressure, and he was gone.  My tandem rig was intact, the hooks were not bent, which could have happened, I suppose; he just caught a break.  Honestly, I am not even sure the net would have worked.  I had to net the 19.5 incher twice because he flopped out the first time, and I hate beaching big wild fish—that, too, can lead to leader snapping, especially 5X, so there is no good solution while fishing alone.  If I were fishing with a buddy, at least I could have blamed him for losing the fish, but if it were Sam or Kev, for example, they may have had the right tool for the job, a nice long-handled, deep basket-ed Brodin or FishPond or something.  Am I going to be one of those guys with the long handle stuck in my wader belt now?  We’ll see how well I sleep over the next couple of weeks, I suppose.  I do have a birthday coming up very soon, and I have been a decent boy

Under there he is, still...

I am not kidding when I say that I almost went home after losing that fish.  I texted Sam for some therapy, knowing he tangles with a lot of big fish, and perhaps knowing that fish that big do get off quite often and that another fisherman would confirm this for my fragile psyche.  His responses helped, but I think talking to Tami on the phone and to another fly guy that I ran into streamside a while later helped me process my defeat and move on.  I am glad I did not go home because I had some redemption, this time landing a large fish on the same rig.  I taped this fish, convinced it was over 20 inches, but while only 19.5, it was a horse.  Length is not the only measure of a beast, I hear (just ask POTUS?).  I was dry heaving again when I released this fish!  I guess it was all too much for my old heart to handle.

Back to reality

I should have gone home then, but I decided to take a drive to one last run before heading home.  Not only were blue winged olives active, but caddis were beginning to pop.  Big fish were active, so could I go 2 for 3?  The results, a stocked brookie, in a wild trout stream… The local TU has been doing this for a few years and claiming they wash over the falls and such.  Who knows where he came from, honestly.  I ended my day here, praying I would sleep and not dream of dancing 24 inch browns all night.  I did, dammit.

Not my best camera work.

April 11, 2018 – Settle Down, Hero, They Stocked Yesterday – Wissahickon Creek

If I squint, I am in the Poconos...

Before starting to write this post, I decided to check the stocking schedule for Philadelphia County and learned that the Comish had dumped a bunch of new fish into the creek on Tuesday, while I toiled away on my 12 hour teaching marathon day (this American runs on La Colombe or Rival Bros.on Tuesdays, not Dunkin’).  That explains why I caught probably 20 fish, mostly browns, in just 2 hours of fishing today.  I worked and graded papers until about 1 PM, when I finally decided I couldn’t take the day off today (from fishing).  While waiting for the bus with the boy, my dad drove by on his way to the Wissy down the street.  Tom C sent me striped bass pics from Monday.  Bucci sent me a picture of a trout he caught later in the morning on his day off from delivering those fresh cuts and fades at the barber shop.  Then Sam broke my spirit sending me shots of wild pigs from State College.  I needed some kind of consolation prize, so I whooped it up on some very fresh stockies, not even knowing just how fresh they were. 

I hear a new diet at the hatchery this year is supposed to give them better colors?

Besides about 5 rainbows that I caught in a flatter hole midging with an indicator, biding my time until I could get into the place I wanted to fish on Monday, which was again occupied for the first 30 minutes, I caught nothing but feisty stocked browns Czech nymphing.  I had the most success on a grub-ish looking caddis pupa, but I also got probably 5 to take the double-beadhead stonefly I was using as an anchor on my tightlining rig.  If I squint and ignore being crowded out by a couple silent bait guys, more silent when I caught 10 fish to their zero before they left me alone, this hole is one of my favorites because it feels like I am on a challenging freestoner with deep pocket water because, well, despite being in Philly, that’s what it is, man.  A good time, though I am not as talented as I think apparently…  I promised myself (and, in turn, you dear reader) that I will pursue something not Wissy-related on Thursday!

Midge, stonefly, and little grub caddis pupa did the trick.

April 9, 2018 – A Chilly, Prematurely Mucky, but Successful Trip Close to Home – Wissahickon Creek

Sure, it looked good from afar, a little dark maybe...

Until this afternoon, I had not fished one of my favorite stretches of the Wissahickon in Fairmount Park, but I am glad I did today.  Despite it starting out sunny, calm, and 40 degrees, the day got cloudier and windier during the 4 hours I put in fishing a variety of nymphs and, as a result, it probably felt colder too.  By the time I quit, I had to put on a small Airlock indicator for line control, but that allowed me to end in a flatter hole that was still loaded up with trout (and tangle with a big palomino that shook off a barbless green weenie after a short battle).  Tightlining a few runs and holes, along with the aforementioned dredging a deep flat hole with an indicator before I left, allowed me to land close to 20 rainbows, I bet, which was a welcomed surprise knowing that two weekends of fishing pressure had not removed many fish, and more fish are on the way later this week, I believe. I am still due for a “real” trip later this week, but this will help make my long Tuesday of teaching a little easier until I can get out again somewhere more interesting.

Not pretty for April 9th or August 9th!

The creek looked great from afar, higher and deeper than it actually was because of a massive algae bloom that darkened the bottom.  I fish the creek a lot, and I don’t remember seeing the bloom so pronounced this early in the season.  I am afraid to ask what organic matter got washed in after all these Nor’easters, as every eddy had broken, dead blooms ready to coat my line, and every rock that was not right in the current was covered with slippery slime.  Perhaps the warm, cold, warm, cold is to blame, but it seems a little suspect.  At any rate, it didn’t affect the fishing today, but I hope some good rains wash it out after we get some leaf cover in the canopy of trees in a few weeks' time.

Squirmie, meh, wormie...

A bunch of middle school-looking students were fishing a couple of my honey holes when I arrived.  I talked to two of them and learned that it’s a sanctioned activity with a teacher, who was upstream with others.  Pretty cool!  Maybe if I send the boy to Springside Chestnut Hill School (on scholarship, mind you) he will embrace fishing more?  I left them to the spot; in fact, I sent these two young bulls fishing a usually-fishless riffle away with a little intel on where to up their chances chunking a spinner before I headed downstream to another deep hole that usually holds fish, even weeks after the stocking trucks depart.  Before reaching the hole, I did catch a couple fish in odd little spots, including a couple on the squirmie wormie, which I have not thrown much before.  Not the most durable fly, especially compared to the san juan worm, but before fish ate off both ends of the worm, leaving me with a pink stub, I did land probably 5 on it.  I have a couple others, but the green weenie is still my old reliable for stocked trout (although midges were active today).

The good old pheasant tail came in 2nd to the green weenie.

 As I set up in the deep run and hole that was my escape from the school kids for good, I switched to a tungsten pheasant tail and, eventually, a green weenie with a walt’s worm off the dropper tag.  I picked up at least 10 fish here before deciding to venture back upstream.  A bait fisherman, a pretty good guy whom I ended up chatting with for a few minutes about all things fishing, was targeting the deep eddy and run that I wanted to target before going home, so I settled into a deep flat in the pool below.  By this time, the wind was getting tricky, so I added an indicator and did my best to mend the line in the inopportune, unpredictable gusts, and I picked up another half a dozen fish.  I also hooked into some “gold” with the weenie, but the big fish shook off my barbless hook in about 10 seconds of battle.  I watched the bait guy catch and release a few up in the hole I wanted to fish, but he had made his way down to me by the time I had to leave to get the boy at the bus stop, so I never got to the prime spot, and I ended up graciously surrendering my final honey hole to him.  He had caught and released the same palamino last week, so it was the least I could do, as I owed it to him for giving me a chance to strike a little gold myself this afternoon.  Thanks to my diminished fish fighting skill set this afternoon, at least on this fish, I guess I have another chance at the same fish some other time?  As long as this odd bloom doesn’t choke them out, I suppose!

April 3, 2018 – Under the Weather, a Fool in the Rain – Wissahickon Creek

Browns remain.

Since Opening Day, I have intended to go fishing a few times, but I just never got there.  I guess I just had a rough week with work and life, and I didn’t feel good on top of that.  By most reports from fishing friends, I know I didn’t miss much with all the unsettled weather, though my dad did very well in the milder, cloudy weather on Friday morning.  The only morning I got out was Tuesday, and I just walked down the street, ill-prepared for the rain and sleet that was on the way.  The trip did not last long, although if the fish were in more of biting mood, or willing to chase a streamer, I may have hung in there a while longer than the 30 or 40 minutes that I did.  After hooking a decent brown trout I only got one more hit before a heavy shower sort of ruined my good time.  I stuck it out for a few more minutes, and then I took a break in the showers not to keep fishing but instead to start my walk home.  If I catch up with all my paper-grading this weekend, I predict more fishing time next week, provided we get a break from the rollercoaster weather...

A dreary shot before the rains came.