It Pays to Break the Mold

It's been a stunning August in Lancaster County. Temps in the upper 70s to mid 80s, low humidity, and excellent rainfalls have kept our small streams in stunning shape, and the brookies are benefiting. Monday evening I jumped at the chance to get an hour and a half or so of fishing in on my local Lancaster hotspot.

Knowing I had a limited window, I decided against fishing my normal stretch. My normal haunt takes about 2 hours to fish from start to finish, and then there's the walk back to the vehicle. In the spirit of time and adventure, I decided to break the mold a little bit and try a section of the stream that is just below where I usually start. I've fished a good stretch of this stream, but the stretch I decided to fish, I've never fished before. When starting down stream, I usually stopped just below this stretch, and when starting upstream, I started at the pool just above. I'm very glad I started where I did. There are some excellent stretches in this section, with hefty browns and brookies. I caught several fish and all of them seemed fat and healthy.

The real gem came at the end of the night, though. As I was wading through the pool which is directly down stream of my usual starting point, I saw a rise in what I assumed was structureless frog water. If I didn't see the rise, I would have waded right through the pool to get to the bank and start the treck back to my vehicle. I made my cast just above the rise, and my fly got POUNDED. This fish jumped clear out of the water. All I saw was a pink belly. I thought I must have caught one of the hold-over rainbows that are still in there from the spring stocking. This would have excited me, actually, because I've never caught a bow in the stream and I was ready for a trifecta (even if the bow was a stockie).

What I brought to hand was even better, though! Landing the fish, I discovered that what I caught was a very large native brook trout. I've always though the ruler on the Eagle Claw Featherlights were cheesy and put there for the bait slingers who picked up the EC rod in an attempt to "try fly fishing". I was glad to have them on this night! I held that brookie up to that ruler, and it measured 12" dead on the nose. This is by far my largest brookie to date! I quickly took its picture and released it. When I got back to my car later and looked at the picture, I feared I mis-measured. My Sasquatch paws made that fish look tiny. So, just to reassure myself, I took a picture of me holding a 12" ruler haha! I sure am glad I decided on something different this night!

Christening of "The Box"

I had an experience early last week in which an older friend gave me all of his fly fishing equipment. He'll never fish again. It was a ceremonial event, at least in my mind. We both knew this day would come, we both weren't looking forward to it, but time and age are cruel mistresses. I'm honored to receive his gear. This is a man who learned to tie and fish from the great Joe Humphreys. He was at Penn State when Milt Eisenhower was there. He's got stories of Ike stopping by the college to meet his brother before heading out to the region's legendary spring creeks. He's been tying as long as he's been fishing.

I don't take this lightly. The closest thing I can liken it to is when Johnny Cash gave Bob Dylan his guitar...except while I have no problem likening my friend to Johnny Cash, I ain't no Dylan.

Still, he gave it to me. Fly tying supplies, hand made rods (the only graphite I'll fish with!), old click pawl reels lined with Cortland 444 DT lines that are still quite usable, boxes of leader material, and the crown gem of them all-a hand built Richardson fly box filled with his flies.

Most of his flies were rusted out, and it pained me to throw out so many flies, but I was able to salvage quite a few, and I've been fishing this past week with a mixture of his flies, my own ties (which are getting better!), and ties made by a friend of mine.

I've been told the best I can do for this fellow, who I'll never ever be able to pay back but I'll sure try, is to send him pictures of my fishing adventures. He takes pleasure in knowing that his stuff is still being used, so here you go old friend. This stuff is built to last, don't be surprised if my own children use it some day!

Frustrating Weekend.

I found this weekend to be incredibly frustrating. My wife was very gracious, as she let me go fishing three nights in a row. Thursday night began with me skipping out on band practice to hit up my local favorite.

Here's the deal. I fished a stretch that last year I did very well on, but haven't fished that much this year yet. Last year it was easily 95% brookies/5% small browns. Something happened this year. In the two hours I fished, I only landed 5 trout (well under par), and 4 of them were browns. I don't like the idea that browns may be pushing out the brookies in this stream. Further sampling may be needed.

Friday night I fished another freestoner. It's listed on the Class A as a solid wild brookie stream. I can't understand this stream. I had a stellar day on it a few months ago and it convinced me that this stream is indeed a Class A stream, but since that day I haven't had great fishing on it. I couldn't have asked for better conditions on Friday night. A bit overcast, water was a little stained, but you could still see well, but the strikes were low. If I took you to this stream, you'd think every hole should have trout in it, but I had to work very hard for every strike. The biggest concern again-mostly brownies, only one brookie.

What is going on? Are the brookies just being stubborn? Are the browns taking over and pushing out the native fish? I've never known a scenario where the brownies will rise and feed more willingly than brook trout. I pray that things aren't shifting to favor the brown trout population, but I fear that is the case.

Saturday night I drove 30 minutes to fish a spring creek-this time intentionally seeking wild browns. I arrived at the stream, geared up, heard "scattered showers" on the weather report, stepped in the stream and the sky opened up. I'm not one to be scarred off by a little rain, but this was no "scattered shower". I sat under a canopy and waited for 45 minutes for the rain to end...when I left it was still dumping buckets.

Frustrating weekend for shizzle.

Long Overdue

I know it's been quite some time since I've made a post. Part of that is laziness, part of it is being insanely busy, part of it is I feel like I rehash the same experience time and time again. "Oh I fished for brookies last night, caught x amount of fish, it was fun." I'm a small stream fisherman. It's what I do. It ain't that exciting to most people, but it's what I love. Squatchin' around in the woods, catching natives, it's perfect to me.

So in early June I headed up to Potter County (God's Country) with the family for a week long vacation. This was the highlight of my summer so far. You can see my photo dump from the trip below. Since this was a family vacation, my fishing time was limited. My wife wasn't keen on sitting around the cabin all day every day with a toddler and a 4yr old while I'm out pounding the streams. I promised my wife I would not do this to her. Instead, I got up at 5:30am every day on my vacation, fished any one of the multitudes of small streams that are within a 10 minute drive of my cabin, and was back in time to eat breakfast with my wife and kids. A few days I snuck out for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

I've been fishing this area of the state as long as I can remember, and I've been fly fishing it since I was 16 years old. In all of my years of fishing, I have never seen the fishing so good.  Every single stream had great flows. The temps were perfect. Most of the days, the skies were overcast, if not a little drizzly. Every pool held fish. Every run produced strikes. When I think about fly fishing in Potter County, I dream of weeks like this.

This summer is a rare event in the life of a North Eastern fly fisherman. The solid amount of rain, the relatively cooler temps ("relative" is the key word...we just had a full week of solid heat indexes of 100 degrees), it has produced a fishing experience that I've not seen in quite some time. You'll forgive the lack of posts from me...I've been busy fishin.

God's Country Photo Dump

Just got back from vacation in Potter County. I have so much to write about, but for now, enjoy the pictures!

Lancaster County Gator Boys!

Pray to God my wife doesn't read this...but this gator was found right where I take my warm-water lunch breaks! I'm pretty sure I could wrastle that sucker in w/ the Fenwick.

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/855786_Man-finds-alligator-along-Conestoga-River-near-Talmage.html

Returning to first loves

Memorial Day weekend is always a weekend where I go back to my "first loves", the local streams that turned me onto small stream fishing. It's always a balancing act for me. It's a family weekend, so while the tendency is to take 3 full days and go fishing from sun-up to sun-down, a man's gotta be a good man and be with his wife and children. That, in and of itself, is better than fishing. This blog, however, is not a blog on family life, but on fishing life, so I have no guilt about putting aside my family affairs and writing solely about the fishing.

Saturday afternoon was cold and windy. I debated all day if I wanted to go fishing. I stayed in all day, cleaning the house, playing with the girls, but during their nap time I couldn't take it any more. I decided that despite the high winds and the dramatically cooler temps, I would go out for a little bit. I headed to Walnut Run in Lancaster County. Walnut was the very first small stream I ever fly fished in Lancaster Co. It's a tributary to Hammer Creek and took a big blow in the back to back floods of 2010. The fish are finally starting to come back though, and fishing has been solid this year.

I never caught a brownie in Walnut before, but we knew they were there because on my first trip there, my friend Brian caught a wild tiger trout. Saturday, I finally cracked the brown code.

Generally, I don't like to see wild browns moving into native brook trout streams, but this was within the first few hundred yards of the stream entering into Hammer, and out of half a dozen trips up this stream this year, this is the only brownie I found in the stream.

I still find that I spook a lot of fish on this stream. The lower half is very flat, the banks are overgrown, so it's difficult to avoid wading. Whether I'm catching the fish or spooking them, its encouraging to me to see fish in this stream.

Yesterday I decided to hit Hammer Creek itself. This, in my opinion, is the best stream in Lancaster County. It has great hatches, lots of native brookies and wild brownies, a few stocked bows, it's spring fed so it's fishable year 'round, the only thing it lacks is structure. The stream could benefit from a little stream bank restoration and special regs like catch and release fly fishing only, but it's Lancaster County's most popular approved trout water, so the state is happy to pump trout into it in the spring, let the slobs have at it, and then ignore the stream the rest of the year. Apparently our local "cold water conservation" group is just as happy to let things go the way they are as well. Fortunately, despite the neglect and the ever-widening banks (which I suspect the state likes because it keeps the surface water area larger-since they deem a stream's rating based on surface water to biomass of fish. If the surface water is larger it keeps the stream rating lower. If they would have to classify it as Class A, they'd have to stop stocking it.), the fish continue to thrive.

The first hole I fished, I saw something hanging from the trees. I thought, "someone must have been fishing up here because there's a green weenie hanging from that tree!" I found this odd since the stretch I was fishing is a stretch that most people never fish. As I got closer, I realized it was actually a green inch worm hanging down from a thread of silk! I saw these inch worms hanging down on just about every tree, and the brookies were taking advantage of this situation!

There was also a strong march brown hatch and a sulphur hatch going on. My original fly (a peacock caddis) wasn't doing much. I switched to a royal wulff and picked up a few, but still, I wasn't getting the results I wanted. I switched to a yellow sally (the biggest yellow fly I had-the sulphers were definitely bigger than I had in my box!) and that did the trick. The trout couldn't stay off the thing, and they were nailing it hard.

The stretch I fished took about 2 hours to fish from bottom to top, and I picked up close to 20 trout in that stretch. A great evening on the stream, and a perfect end to the Memorial Day weekend!

PS-my camera is cheap and will not focus on micro-mode. Suck.
                            

           Most of the brookies I caught were in this range

                                         
                                          A nice brownie

                                         
                                          Hammer Creek in full springtime bloom

 As I got back to my car, I realized what a mess
a fisherman's trunk can be! Look at all that glass!