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.
I had intended on writing an article on our fishing trip to WV, but Rusty did such a good job, I thought I’d leave it at that. Be sure to check out our photos from the trip in the gallery HERE We had a great time down there and I’m sure we’ll be back in the future. This article is somewhat tied into our trip but has more to do with something that’s been nagging me for a while now. It’s the great debate on Dry Fly fishing vs. Nymphing.
I listen to some popular fly fishing podcasts on my long commute to and from work everyday and in the last 2 episodes, the issue of dry fly fishing vs. nymphing has come up. It seems like those who subscribe to one school of thought or the other always have something negative or condescending to say about the other. In the latest podcast I heard, a comment was made about a stream that they were fishing where they could see larger fish holding on the bottom of a deep pool. They were fishing dries and said that those larger fish would probably not come up from the depths to take a dry, and the thought of fishing a nymph came up. Then, one of the hosts said, “yeah, you could fish a nymph down there and probably pick up one of the larger fish, but you’d feel dirty about it afterwords.”.
Now, I’m not a purist, and maybe if I were, I’d side with the host on that comment, but to me, that’s a ridiculous comment. I don’t know about some of these dry fly fishing purists, but when I go fishing, I go for basically 2 reasons. Reason one is to get away and spend time outdoors, and reason two (and most important) is TO CATCH FISH. Why on earth, if you were going out with the intent of catching fish would you say: “I’m not going to try to catch those larger fish with a nymph because nymphing isn’t as pure as dry fly fishing.”?
On Rusty and I’s recent trip, we ended up fishing a wild stream deep in the backcountry, and due to the conditions, I spent 90% of my time fishing dry flies. Not because I’m a purist, or because I prefer fishing dries, but because given the conditions, that was (in my opinion), the way to go. I enjoy catching fish on dries from time to time, and I consider myself an excellent caster. I love sidearm casting in tight conditions and flipping dries back under brush and overgrown stream banks. Am I going to talk down on nymphing because I like fishing dries occasionally? NO! Most of the time I fish nymphs because I’ve learned in my 15 or so years of fly fishing that the bigger fish, and more fish, feed on the bottom.
I’ve watched guys fishing dries in the past during the day while no flies are coming off the water, or very few are coming off and they aren’t catching anything. Meanwhile, Rusty and I will be dredging with nymphs and picking up fish left and right. Are we “bad” fly fishermen for fishing nymphs when there’s no hatch? NO! We are in fact “matching the hatch”, or more accurately, “matching the lack of hatch” because that’s what the FISH want!
I’m not saying that nymphing is “better” than fishing dries, and I don’t think anyone who goes fly fishing to catch fish would say either way that one is “better” than the other. The other thing I commonly hear is “nymphing is easier than dry fly fishing”. Now, I’m really confused at this one. First of all, when you’re fishing dries, there is typically NO mistaking a take from a fish. You’d have to be a really poor fishermen to miss a take on a dry. Nymphing on the other hand is always resulting in mistaken takes and snags, cases where the hydraulics cause slack between your indicator and your flies and times when you’re fishing over no fish. Nymphing requires much more of an understanding of where fish hold deeper in the water, and a greater knowledge of what insect life is most prevalent than when dry fly fishing.
I really can’t understand how someone could say that nymphing is easier than dry fly fishing, but that’s not my point. My point is, who cares? The point is to go out, have a good time and catch fish. By that logic, really, anything goes. I personally don’t have any gripe with people using spinners(hardware), live bait and powerbait for that matter. It’s not my cup of tea, but I can’t fault people for trying to catch fish by logical (except powerbait ?) means.
Here’s a good thing to think about. One of the most intriguing waters I’ve fished is the North Branch of the Potomac in MD/WV. This river is awesome, huge, fast moving and contains a fair number of trout. The problem is, though, that it has very poor insect life. This river is no secret, and is known for producing the state record fish. So how did the fish get so big without insect life? The simple answer: Baitfish. So, given that piece of knowledge, here is a simple question: If you want to catch big fish on a river like the North Branch, what should you fish?: (A) Nymphs (B) Streamers (C) Dry Flies. If you answered (B), you’d be right on, and I hope it doesn’t take a genius to realize that. Now, by the purists way of thinking, you’d fish dries. Why in the hell would you fish dries for giant trout that spend 99% of their time on the BOTTOM of a river with pools as deep as 20 feet, on a stream that has VERY little insect life, and virtually NO hatches?
I apologize for the harsh post, and such a bunch of rambling, but this whole dry vs. nymph thing has been WAY too common for my ears lately. Just had to get this off my chest and point out the North Branch example as an extreme to illustrate the bullheadedness of some people’s thinking on dries vs. nymphs.
