Lower Trestle Run - Part 1
Decided to walk into the Lower Trestle Run today, and save my Home Water for another day. Lower Trestle is one of my 13,000 favorite places, for several reasons. First of all, it tends to be isolated by the mile plus walk to the water. And once there, it just a downright pretty place to be, and fish.
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...002_edited.jpg
Second, it is the place that I first learned the value of matching the hatch by throwing a baitfish style streamer just above rising fish and stripping it through them. That happened just two years ago on this patch of water.
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...003_edited.jpg
Couldn't reach the rising fish with a floating line and hope to get a decent drift, so I decided to try a streamer. Bingo !! Caught something like twelve fish the first day right there, and some more downstream just fishing the water with the same streamer. Fished the same hatch several times that fall using the streamer technique and consistently caught medium sized cutthroats and good sized browns here.
Third, right along the bank in the first photo is one of the grandest brown trout redds that I have seen. They aren't in there yet, but most likely will be within a couple weeks. The past two years, the redd has extended somewhere around a hundred fifty feet long and about ten feet wide. On any given day, at any time, you might see fifty, sixty, seventy large browns on the redds, just ten to fifteen feet away.
Fourth, it can be a really good place for fishing streamers.
Today it was slow and steady. But my landing rate was back to normal. Hooked fourteen or fifteen trout and one whitefish using the pine squirrel streamer, and landed all but two of them. The whitefish was the first fish of the day - and a real surprise since they very seldom will take a streamer, and only then, to my experience, when it is just hanging in the current, as it was today.
These two fish are pretty typical of the browns in this stretch of the South Fork.
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...o/PA160006.jpg
Surprised you !! Right ??
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...o/PA160009.jpg
( Continued )
Lower Trestle Run - Part 2
The following two pictures are the same fish. I took somewhere around fifteen underwater shots today and ended up with a half dozen or so worth saving. Sometimes you just get lucky !!
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...o/PA160011.jpg
And a full body shot.
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...o/PA160012.jpg
At the lower end of the Lower Trestle Run is a nice riffle.
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...018_edited.jpg
Doesn't always produce, but today the first fish on there, and in hand, was a rather skinny 18-19" brown.
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...o/PA160016.jpg
Had another fish there which was shorter but fatter. Very healthy and fiesty fish.
Finished up midway through the Run. Picked up a couple more browns, one about 16" and the other a bit smaller.
All in all, another good day on the South Fork. This stretch has changed some since last year, but not dramatically, and overall, for the better, I think. Will likely fish this stretch several times in the coming weeks, just for the opportunity to see the browns on the redd, even if the fishing isn't great.