Allan and JC - I believe RW is writing up the report. There were a lot of pics taken and RW was collecting them.
Here are a few things from this last week that stood out from the last 40-50 yrs of ffishing this area:
Bugs: - there were a LOT of them, and a lot of different ones. The Green Drakes were around all day most days, and there were constant March Browns and Gray Foxes. Some pools had Sulfurs, and there were some Light Cahills. Mornings had tremendous Cornuta, along with Attenuata. Plenty of Baetis in a couple of sizes, as well as Paraleptophlebia.
One pool had more size 1/0 Golden Stones than I’ve ever seen. Yellow Sallies were more productive. A variety of caddisses were about, and as usual the Psilotreta was my best searching caddis. Some pools (Hazel again) had scads of midges.
Visible trouts: Only Hazel provided the usual experience of being able to observe multiple trouts looking over your flies, and sneering/kissing/spitting at them, and once in awhile, making the mistake of saying “ah” and giving the opportunity to play them. Most of the rest of the time, you just had to watch the water carefully for the occasional rise. I used up a lot of tippet with fly changes.
Tent caterpillars: don’t recall so many in past years. Some old hands thought they were the reason so little rising went on, except for the evenings, as maybe the trouts gorged on them. However, until this year, I have never seen any trout eat one of these critters. I actually saw a stockie eat one at Ferdon’s, and I kept waiting for it to pop back up from being spit out.
There were so many in some places that sitting down on a log meant that you may have squooshed a dozen of them. I used this to advantage one morning by ffishing below Allan on the Willowemoc, since I could see trouts rising below him, no doubt from his chumming the water.
Charlie’s feat - not to steal his thunder (I think he’s writing an article), but I was with him and Jerry and slic, all of us looking for alpha trouts. I noticed Charlie was using a very short rod and looked more closely and realized he had the butt and reel under his arm and was using just the tip. Wondering if he was using Lefty’s trick of shortening up the rod length for tight quarters, I asked Charlie ‘how come’?
Well - he had broken the rod in a tree and didn’t have a backup in the truck. So he kept ffishing, casting surprisingly well anyway. I thought this was a trifle foolish, since what would happen if he hooked a big enough trout to mandate getting him on the reel?
I conditioned a part of the water for Charlie by running a dozen or so flies over it and then went on upstream. Sure enough, I soon heard a big splash and there was Charlie, snubbing a big brown. I was flat out amazed at the fight (several jumps) and how Charlie had to keep him from running so he wouldn’t get himself tangled up in the long line (he couldn’t reel much with the broken butt and reel). Jerry has the pix.
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trouts demographics: this year has been one for fewer, but much bigger trouts. The floods and succeeding drought may have something to do with it. Nevertheless, this last week was much better than the Hendrickson and early March Brown weeks. As usual, the big stocking the week before displaced the big guys and got them sulking, but both were coming to their senses by the time we showed up.
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antique glass: LouT brought out his John Deere edition True Temper at the Cookout - I had one of my white Wonderods, but we never organized ourselves to ffish them together at Cairn’s - there weren’t enough gullible anglers there to wow.
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wildlife: there were a lot of mergansers this year. I wonder if this had something to do with the scarcity of rising? I nearly stepped on an eel/lamprey - it was cool to see it. It was spotted and light gray and looked like a big curved branch till I nudged it with my staff. The spring peepers were out doing their thing and strings of frog eggs were along the shores.
I noticed the starlings and blackbirds were learning how to eat the bigger slower bugs - caddises were too mobile for them, but the swallows and cedar waxwings knew what to do. Robins and orioles and those little yellow ones were chowing down. The big bugs that hatched while there was a lot of light needed to head for the trees right away to survive. After awhile, when I was searching for hatching MB’s and GD’s and possible risers, I just moved to where I could hear the birds chirping about the hatches.
One spot had what I thought was a serial riser. When I got closer, there was a big beaver swimming back and forth. Some of the trees had the beaver chew marks, and there was a big 50’ tree that was leaning over, almost completely beavered through. Not a good place to sit under when it got windy.
Anyhow, I casted a huge dun variant in a side slick for style points and was rewarded by a 16" rainbow that wound me around a couple of rocks and jumped a few times. I finally landed him, but the line lost a few dozen hours of lifetime. He wasn’t as big as several of the browns in the same water, but his fight was more spectacular. I was relieved that the line held up with the bigger browns after the rocking. Some of the credit for hanging on to the bow throughout the extended fight might go to the 9’4wt All American I was using at the time. It has an exceptionally forgiving action to the sudden surges the bow was prone to.
Snakes - I knew my Zen/Mojo for being in harmony with the ecology was working when snakes would swim up to me. I don’t think they inhibit the trouts feeding that much. -
new folks: it is great to meet newcomers, especially some of the young’uns. We need more of them in our sport.
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vets: it’s just as great to catch up with the folks whom I’ve ffished with before. We’re all learning neat new things together.
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not exactly a highlight, but when I heard and saw an emergency vehicle shooting down Old 17 on Saturday, I was concerned maybe one of our folks got into a problem. The drowning at Junction was exactly where I stood the day before. Last year I roped in several dozen trouts in a few hours where the dropoff is. This year, the water seams kept submerging my line, which made it hard to strike, so I quit after a handful of ffish, especially since I didn’t see any larger trouts rising at the time. I knew it was real deep there, but I never thought the seams had that much of an undertow to it. And I have a staff, studs and wading belt, which I now wonder if they would have been enough had I fallen in.
Looking forward to next year…
tl
les
[This message has been edited by lesyoung (edited 06 June 2006).]
[This message has been edited by lesyoung (edited 06 June 2006).]
[This message has been edited by lesyoung (edited 06 June 2006).]
[This message has been edited by lesyoung (edited 06 June 2006).]