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!
just had to test out the underwater camera. It’s really short, but I didn’t think he was gonna hang around for a while. First time I’ve tried video underwater. I’ll have to do some experimenting. I really want to dunk this thing in a good holding spot and just let it record. We’ll see. Some pics from todays trip too. I’m too tired to write a full article, but plan to about this trip…
I just thought the spots on these guys were cool. The first one has the faint side spots like you see on wild rainbows. I’ve only seen that a handful of times on browns.
Thought I’d post this here. I made a little watercolor from the wild rainbow pic in the gallery. If anyone wants a watercolor done of a fish, let me know. Also, there’s a bigger version in the photo gallery.
