I made the trip to Buffalo early Friday morning, spent some time with my sister and nieces (they’re so cute, and they’re growing up too fast) while waiting for my bro-in-law to finish errands…so I could borrow his truck of course.
My solo trip to a medium-sized Lake Erie trib Friday the 10th yielded a smallish steelhead buck and a big, beautiful male brown. Probably the biggest I’ve ever caught, and that’s including all the piggies I’ve caught over the last 20 years out of Lake Ontario. If I had to guess, I’d say around 12 lbs, which ain’t the biggest out there, but this fish was absolutely determined not to have his picture taken. I did snap a quick photo with an old digital camera that has had its thirst slaked by more than one body of water. So here’s the pic, certainly not the best but it gives an idea of the size of the fish:
Water was a tad low and on the clear side on Friday, and had many hook-ups but only a few extended fights, most of which resulted in long-distance releases.
On Saturday, pspaint (Phil) swung by and picked me up around o’dark early and we headed to the same stream. The rain held off just long enough for us to start getting into our gear. First stop and Phil gets into a decent fish:
A few yards upstream, he’s into a real hog of a buck that ended up being the biggest fish of the day:
I managed to hook and play a large male brown for several minutes before he decided to put my feeble 4X tippet to the test under a submerged branch. The brownie won. Phil got a pretty brown out of the same hole, but because it didn’t meet his strict size criteria 
, he asked that it not be photographed. Truth be told, it was a nice 16-18" fish.
I finally landed my first fish of the day out of a small run, right up against the bank. Turned out to be a beautiful hen that was my biggest that day:
A little farther upstream, I succeeded in hooking and landing a dark steelhead buck that refused a few offerings and finally chased down a blood dot:
After several hook-ups for both of us, we worked our way back down to the vehicle, and I got this nice male out of the same hole where Phil plucked the slob-of-the-day:
We moved to another spot a few miles upstream and porceeded to get into fish almost immediately. A few long-distance releases and near misses later, Phil landed a colorful male that was a tad camera-shy. So then he works his magic and takes a large fish on a swung egg pattern:
I got to finish it off with a super acrobatic smaller fish after it started to pour not long before we decided to call it quits. I guess we landed a dozen fish, had a few that were darn close, and (at least I) had too many long-distance releases and short hook-ups to call myself a respectable fisherman. We had a great day, weather considered, and got to fish a nice stream without much pressure. One of those days…right place, right time.
Tight lines all!
Marty