The year is winding down, the streams and rivers are full of hungry trout and a few beautiful days are still ahead of us. This is such a great time of year for a fly fisherman. The trout fishing is excellent and the steelhead fishing can be dynamite.
My fishing companion and myself live for fly fishing. Fly fishing for trout is a normal with the two us, but when the steelhead run, we seem to get a little more excited at the idea of landing monster trout in big numbers. We have tried several different areas and went on several different journeys with mixed results. This year we thought if we could hike farther then normal, which is usually a good jont anyway, we could find a little more solitude. Nothing left to do now, but go fishing!
This fall we decided on an area in New York that we had never fished before, but were willing to try something different. Normally we go to Northwestern Pennsylvania for these steelhead, along with thousands of others. Knowing that the river we were going to fish was a demanding hike into good fishable water, we went prepared and ready for anything.
Upon arrival into New York, the skies were beautiful and the breeze subtle, great fly fishing conditions, so we hoped. Armed with nothing but our 9 foot 6 weight rods and some beef jerky and Gatorade to keep us going, we started our journey into what we soon realized was greatness. After the 2 mile hike was over, we started fishing, and it was hard to concentrate. The unbelievable valley was a sight that I won’t soon forget. The 250 foot canyon walls and the color of the fall leaves made a unforgettable vista.
The fishing stared out a little slow. We fished some very nice water with no results and were starting to get a little worried. I kept thinking that I drove to New York to get skunked, but was very optimistic that some steel would reach the net. We kept fishing and moving up river until we found a great area that had several steelhead jumping the falls and shooting upstream. This was pretty amazing to watch. These fish are just so powerful and make it all look so easy. The one thing that wasn’t easy was the hooking of fish, but that was gonna soon change.
The river we fished was super cluody with about 15 inches of visibility, which meant slow presentation was gonna be a big factor in the fish finding the fly. It was now about noon and no fish had rewarded us yet, but as soon as the clock hit 12:00, the magic started to happen. The first fish that I hooked was and absolute monster that proceeded to break me off after a 10 minute battle. Wow, these fish are strong. I think these fish fought twice as hard as the steelhead in Erie, which we’ve caught several times. Not long after I lost that first fish, Philip hooked into an acrobatic slab of steel that was just amazingly strong and colorful. When I finally netted it for him we were so excited and ready for more. This first fish was probably 24 inches and about 8 pounds. Simply amazing fish.
The fishing started 2 get better and better as the day went on. We hooked several others that out witted our fighting abilities until a huge female steelhead took my egg pattern and the fight was on. I just couldn’t believe the power these fish had and the strong water current gave them the upper hand. This fish was ripping line of my reel so fast, which was music to my ears. The battle went on for what seem like forever until I finally became the victor and was rewarded a huge fish. Philip had trouble netting the fish because it wouldn’t fit in our inadequate net. He landed it for me with his hands and we admired this LOG for a bit before releasing her back into the depths of the river. She was the biggest steelhead I ever landed, it was 33 inches and 16 pounds, what a fish.
Well I was still excited about the last fish I had caught when Philip hooked another nice fish. It’s hard to talk about all these fish in depth because they are all big fish and we hooked so many of them. I would say on average these fish were 8 to 10 pound and we landed about 15 of them. If I had to guess I would say you land about one out of every five you hook, at least using 6 weight outfits. That’s one thing we need to rethink next time, heavier fishing outfit would have been nice. Using a 6 weight did make it more interesting though.
This was such an amazing trip, the weather was perfect, the fish were cooperative and the people were non existant. I know that I paid for the long hikes we took, the next couple days, but it was sure worth it. This is one of the best trips Philip and I ever had, and I think we owe it all to Sunshine, Solitude, and Steelhead.
Rusty and i hit one of our favorite rivers yesterday with the kind of weather that fishermen dream of. It was cloudy all day and in the 70’s with a gentle breeze. We knew the river was going to be lower than we’ve ever fished it before and the Army Corps of Engineers that manages the dam and flow rates had just dropped the river by 50 cfs the day before, but decided we wanted to see the river low so we could better understand some of the deep pools. Normally, this river runs at around 300cfs, and they have whitewater releases in the 1000 cfs range. We fished it at 148cfs and it proved to take some of the fun out of this river.
She runs through a gorge and drops in elevation a fair amount over her 10 mile course from the outflow to the confluence of another great river in the area. Huge bolders and deep fast pools are what this river is all about. On our last trip to this river, Rusty stumbled on a “hot” fly pattern that produced a lot of fish for us. We hit the river armed with this fly en mass. We walked about 1.5 miles down river from the car and got in at one of the big holes that produced good fish on our last trip. Right off the bat Rusty landed a 19″ beauty of a bow.
We thought this was an indicator to the day to come, but it didn’t really work out that way. We landed a few more fish each over the next few hours of fishing and I think we each had some nice fish on, but it wasn’t the numbers from the last trip. We left pondering the situation and what exactly had caused the change in the fish’s behavior.
Thus the great fishing game continues. There are so many variables in flyfishing. Everything from weather, stream flow, water clarity, water temperature, time of year, the amount of sunlight during the day, insect activity and possibly even moon phase, play an important role in our days on the river and our success. Dealing with these factors only helps to enhance the challenge of the sport, and make it all the more desirable to attempt to master. It’s what makes flyfishing so great, and why so many pursue it as a sport.
We definitely both felt that we’d rather fish the river with a little more flow than it had yesterday. Just when we thought we had figured out a few of it’s secrets, this river showed us that it is a force to be reckoned with , and that it isn’t done throwing us curve balls. Whether it was the 1 day drop in water flow the day before, or that there were quite a few more people on the river yesterday than usual, or that the air temperature had dropped slightly over the last days, the fact of the matter is that the river didn’t produce as good as it has in the past.
I think we can only hope to come to terms with the reasons, and not necessarily master them. We can take the factors into consideration, and formulate reasonable decisions around them, but we can never fully understand them or overcome them. The largely unknown nature of trout is what makes them one of the most difficult fish to take on the fly, and why we pursue them at such length.
It’s been a few weeks since Phil and myself got to fly fish together, so when we got the opportunity to do so, we didn’t hesitate. We decided that were going to fish a tail water river that we both enjoy. The great thing about tail water fisheries is that the water temperature remains pretty much the same year round. This type of everyday consistency makes the fishing good all year, unless it’s really raging.
Now let me get started by saying this is probably one of the hardest eastern rivers I’ve ever fished. You can literally pound the water all day and come away with one or two trout landed, or have a absolute great day and land 20. Yes, I said 20. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot, but for this river, that is a top notch outing.
We started our day fishing some streamers with little to no luck. A few fish gave chase and a few landed, but nothing great by any means. As we continued to try different patterns and approaches we couldn’t believe the difficulty we were having. We stopped, sat for a while, watched the water, a few trout taking emergers here and there, but nothing to get excited about. We pushed on trying various patterns, then all of a sudden I rolled a nice fish in a fast run. That made me a little excited knowing that nymphing may be the key to success today.
I then tried an old standby that Phil and I used for years, but not a lot lately. This old reliable fly is the San Juan Worm, wine in color, about a size 14. I fished a cast or two and was immediately rewarded with a nice rainbow about 14 inches. I can’t get over how powerful these tailwater fish are, but what a blast. I continued fishing and before long another, then another and soon a nice rainbow, about 22 inches, smoked my fly and it was time for some arobatics. Phil was slightly upstream when I hollered for him, and he soon caught a glimpse of the fish on one of it’s many jumps. He started toward me with the net to try and land this log, but after 8 minutes the fly pulled out and he was of to fight another day.
The day is starting to heat up now with several fish cooperating, along with a heavy trout that Phil hooked and lost. He said it had some good weight, and by the amount of rod bend I seen, I’d say he was right. We caught a few more then decided to go to one of these big holes Phil told me about. He wasn’t kidding either, this was a massive hole with a lot of depth and current. Standing there thinking about the potential this had we couldn’t wait any longer, and started fishing. This is where it got really fun. I made my way accross some swift and slick current to fish the far side of these headwaters. Phil said he landed a few nice fish there the previous time. I got set and made a cast, my indicater twitched and I nice rainbow shot out of the water and started stripping line. I knew this was a nice one, but the strength of these fish is incredible. Phil made his way to me and landed in with his net after a good 5 minute battle. This was the fish of the day, thick and about 18 inches. After releasing that fish we took a little break and enjoyed a few more before heading back to reality.
This was one of those days that make you realized how great the outdoors really are, and spending time doing what you love with friends and family is what it’s all about. So old reliable came through for us today and made a not so productive day, an absolute great day! First and foremost, don’t rate your fishing days on the amount you catch, but on the amount you learn. You can never know to much about fly fishing, just ask that 22 inch rainbow that got away!
We’ve gotten hammered with rain here in western PA over the last week and it’s put the stream flows throughout PA, MD and WV in the USGS water watch map terminology “very high”. Today was father’s day and my wife asked what I wanted to do for father’s day, to which, of course, my answer was “go fly fishing of course”. I was a little discouraged last night as I looked over the USGS water watch map and saw all the cyan, blue and black dots signaling that the water levels throughout the tri-state area were “un-fishable”. I slept in this morning til 6 and poked around the house, tying flies and playing on the Internet until the girls woke up. My wife asked why I decided against fishing and I had to explain that I thought the water was un-fishable. At about 9 am, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to at least go look at my local stream. So I packed up my gear (because you can’t ever just “go look”) and headed down the road for the 30 minute drive to the DHALO area on my local stream.
As I rounded the bend to where the river is visible, my heart sunk a bit as the water looked like Yoohoo. I told myself “maybe it’s clearer up river” and kept going. I pulled in the lot at the project and noticed another vehicle there. Could someone else be as crazy as me? I figured they were just walking the trail that parallels the river and walked down to the stream to check it out. The water in this section actually didn’t look too bad. It was definetly off color and very high. I could see the bottom in a few places where the water was shallow and about 1 foot deep. I decided to give it a go.
I geared up and immediately thought to put on a streamer, which I did. I put a muddler minnow on and tied about a 24″ section of tippet off the bend of the hook down to a flashback phesant tail (size 16) with a single “BB” shot above the muddler. I walked up stream a good bit to start working my way down. I should mention that I rarely fish streamers, and never really liked fishing them. I remembered reading about a method in the current issue of Fly Fisherman magazine where a guy in Colorado has had great success fishing a streamer with a dropper and pounding deep pools fishing the rig in a dead drift style vs. a stripping style.
That’s how I progressed fishing for the rest of the day. I fished the streamer up into the current just as if I was fishing a tandem rig with nymphs, except with no strike indicator. Within a few casts I had a fish HAMMER the streamer and the fishing continued like that until 6 in the evening. At around 4 a small caddis hatch came off and there were fish surfacing. Normally, I would have thrown on a dry and fished for them, but I was having such a blast with my new found success with the streamer that I just kept fishing the streamer.
There really is something thrilling about having a decent 14″-15″ brown or bow just come up from no where and pound the hell out of a streamer. The point of all of this is that when mother nature throws a curve ball and you think that the water isn’t going to be fish able because it’s 90% higher than it’s normal flow, don’t be discouraged. I ended up having one of the best days on the water that I’ve ever had today (probably 50-60 fish to the net) just because I figured what the hell, I’ll try it. I also left my comfort zone the the streamer, and I am hooked on it now. I don’t know whether the colored water had anything to do with the aggressiveness that these fish had or whether I just forgot that trout usually crush streamers, but I really wasn’t expecting the show that these fish put on for the streamer.
Next time the water looks like it’s going to be unfishable, I’m going to get excited and pitch some streamers!
