salmonoid
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- Jun 19, 2007
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For the past number of years, we've taken my parents away to a state park cabin as a Christmas gift. This year, we were late in making reservations but lucked out on getting the Ole Bull Lodge in Ole Bull State Park for Labor Day weekend.
With the batch of warm weather and the temperature gauge on Kettle Creek on Cross Fork nudging the mid-70's earlier in the week, I contemplated leaving the fishing gear at home. But, there was a chance we'd be doing a little hiking along some cold water tribs, and that contemplation was brief and the errant thought defeated.
I had been to the park only one other time. My buddy and his dad and I started a hike/bushwack that incorporated part of the Susquehannock Trail System one Thanksgiving weekend in my younger days and we used the trailhead at the park as our launching point on that hike. The cabin sounded nice on paper and in further correspondence with the park manager, to try and determine how many folks it could actually sleep. And it turned out to be a fine log cabin, cozy, homey, and very relaxing for our long weekend.
I did a little scouting for fish as soon as we were unpacked early Friday evening. I was surprised to find actively feeding trout in the Childrens' special regs section, although I still don't know what they were taking. Most were stockers, as far as I could tell and maybe they thought the leaves were pufffed and flattened pellets?
I made it to the water Friday night, but not with a rod, just a light, to do a little spotting. Some people spot for deer. I like to spot for fish at night, when I'm not trying to catch them. In some of the shallow more open water, I spotted a rainbow or brown or two, but they warily darted away as soon as the light hit. I walked downstream a bit, but didn't turn up any fish (although I was convinced I was going to run into a bear, given the proximity to people, and dumpsters full of garbage).
Saturday, we took a family hike. A winding path through jewelweed, visited by hundreds of loudly buzzing bees, yielded a small opening on a dam. But not one that was manmade.
It also yielded a meltdown of my youngest child, who feared that she was being abandoned and would not be able to transverse the slightly muddy trail we had followed in. Given that she had Crocs on and I had sneakers, she should have been able to slop through, but dad ended up carrying her and she made it back and the crisis was averted. I went streamside for a bit to take another look at the water and spotted a few trout cruising around, including a nice looking rainbow.
Late afternoon, I took a stream temperature of 68 degrees. That is starting to push the upper limit of what I will fish but given that the shadows were starting to lengthen, I felt comfortable at least taking the rod for a walk. Interestingly enough, the USGS data from further downstream showed a pretty strong correlation between the overcast day that was Saturday, compared to the sunny days before and after, and the stream temperature.
I walked downstream about a mile to a point where the stream braided into two. The left channel was nicely shaded and I followed that downstream a few hundred more yards before starting to fish at some nice looking spots. I moved a few trout in the first area but couldn't get them to commit. But I quickly found that there were active fish in the riffles. The first one I lost, greeted only by the sight of a beautiful red side. The second one, I landed, greeted by the sight of a horned creek chub!
After about half an hour of working my way upstream, I broke the trout skunk, when I landed first a native brookie, and then a larger brown from this little run.
The brookie flopped off; the brown was a bit more photogenic (and I could be convinced it was wild on some days).
Further upstream, I looked up and saw a bald eagle cruising down the valley. By the time I fumbled out my phone to snap a picture, he had flown right over me and was headed further downstream.
Next up - another little run. I've learned to never overlook these riffles that are bounded by cover, no matter how shallow they are. Brownies appear to live this type of haunt.
This fish was trying to morph into a wild fish. But his spots were the stocker orange, although I swear he was trying to grow a kype.
It was very peaceful and still. The weather was markedly cooler from the previous days and though the water wasn't moving rapidly through some of the pools, it was still a beautiful time to be on the stream. A faint hue of autumn had begun to touch the leaves as well.
And then back in the park, below the beaver dam, I made acquaintance with the rainbow I had spotted earlier in the day. He fell for a nymph (as did a few more chubs).
Arriving back at camp, I tallied six trout (two browns, one rainbow and three native brookies) and probably sixteen chubs. My kids had gone to a stream stomp of their own while I was fishing - the naturalist put on a program about aquatic life and the kids got to wade and look for crayfish and nymphs. Here's my youngest putting her knowledge to use.
We did a little more spotting for fish that night, turning up a few trout again and this time, three smallies. But with a twinge of a stomach bug, I opted to goto sleep Saturday evening.
Sunday, we took another hike. We climbed to Castle Vista, where Ole Bull began but never completed construction of his home and then used the STS and Daughtery Loop to stroll along Ole Bull Run and scramble hillside through a pine forest.
Ole Bull was a Norwegian violinist who was in love with America. He purchased warrants on 13 square miles of land in Potter County, in hopes of starting a Norwegian colony here. But, the dude that sold him the land reserved certain areas (unbeknownst to Ole); those areas just happened to be all the arable land in the stream valleys, leaving Ole and his posse to try and scratch out a living on the hillsides. They abandoned the endeavor and moved to the midwest after a few short years. I guess the guy that sold the land to them felt guilty, because he bought it all back for the same price he sold it to them.
view from Castle Vista:
remains of Ole's "Castle":
With a warmer, more humid day on Sunday, such a hike necessitated going swimming, which we did. While watching the kids swim, I observed a critter crawling across the rock wall. I discovered it was not a caterpillar crawling erratically backwards, but an ant dragging said caterpillar.
He dragged the caterpillar against the pine needles and they impeded his progress.
So, he backed up.
And dragged the caterpillar over the needles instead.
I watched a father and a son fishing but it looked like they were fishing in frog water and weren't doing much catching. My kids wanted to fish, so we took advantage of slightly less froggy (although not much less) water in the Childrens' section. My oldest hooked and landed a trout all by herself and the youngest was happy reel in a few trout that I hooked on nymphs.
Feeling a whole lot better on Sunday night, I told my wife I was going out to fish for a bit. I went out to where we had spotted the smallies the night before and after a few minutes of nothing, something absolutely crushed my fly. I was surprised at the amount of traffic at 11:30 at night - crazy kids riding around on bikes in a posse of six, with only one headlamp, or vehicles on the road, slowing down, probably wondering what the crazy camouflage figure was sitting by the stream with a fly rod in his hand. But eventually, I had another violent strike, and this time, I brought my first night time smallie to hand.
Unfortunately, I discovered a key difference between my old phone and my new phone. My old phone would flash once and take the picture. The new phone flashes, waits two seconds, then flashes again to take the picture (I guess to provide something lit up for the sensors to pick up and focus on). In that time, smallie floppped off into the water, but I assure you, he was there two seconds before the second flash.
I had one more violent strike and a few softer strikes but landed nothing else, so I was ready to throw in the towel. The family had abandoned the fire ring an hour before, so they were all in bed by now. But something nudged me to walk upstream a bit, to the frog water. The night was clear and stars provide a decent amount of light, even with no moon. When I got to the upstream stretch, I tried to remember the lay of the land as I had seen it earlier in the day. My memory didn't work so well, but I eventually found a spot of the bank that was weed free. There was a telephone right beside my spot, and an electrical wire ran overhead. I wondered if it was possible to be electrocuted via fly rod on an errant backcast. It may be, but I never found out.
The splash of a fish quickly turned my attention back to the water. And then the splash of another. And another. I could see pretty well, between the starlight and the reflections of light on the water from the other side of the stream. And while I'm someone who likes to mostly sight fish during the day, that usually is not possible at night. You do more hear fishing - listening for the splashy rise that announces the presence of a surface feeding fish. For the casting lane straight in front of me, I was able to combine hear fishing with sight fishing, as a few Christmas lights in the distance reflected across the water.
I cast, twitched, retrieved. Cast again. Upstream and downstream, for fifty yards, the water was filled with splashes every few minutes. Its the kind of fishing that makes you wonder if you know what you are doing. Fish all around you are feeding on something and you've somewhat neutralized the aspect of them spotting you like they would on a sunny day, with gin clear water. But you can't hook a fish. You cast some more, think a bit about the situation.
And miss a hookset as a fish finally takes your offering. The misses are different. Sometimes, you see the rise right in the area you just cast your fly. You set the hook. Nothing is there. Other times, you feel the hesitation in your retrieve. And you know that a fish has your gurgler in its mouth, trying to determine if it's food. And it decides it is not and spits it out. And other times, those combine, you set the hook, and for 2-10 seconds, you are doing battle with something, before it slips the hook. Sometimes you sense the fish, set the hook, fight the fish and the fish slips away, while you line goes flying behind you, and you hook (quite securely) a wild rose bush.
And sometimes, about 1:30AM in the morning, when you wonder if you should give it up for the night, and you've untangled from the wild rose bush at least a dozen times, a fish doesn't slip the hook when all the other things come together. You work towards shore, stumbling backwards as you manage to find the only large rock in the stream within fifty yards of you. You don't know what you've hooked. You realize that what was only supposed to be a short outing, which consequently made you bring only your rod, your reel and line, and a single fly meant that your net was lying back at the cabin. A few feet from shore, you throw on the light and realize you've hooked something that is on the larger size of your average trout.
And you land the trout, marveling that the whole back side of the fish's gill plate is blue. This is another trout that wants to be wild but is not. The digital camo spot pattern near its tail gives it's origin away. But you wonder if you're looking at one of the first stocked trout that you've caught that doesn't have the semblance of an eye spot visible...
No tape on me, because, well, as I said, I had taken the minimalist approach for the evening, but with a six-seven inch fingerspan and the wonders of modern technology (ImageMeter app), I'd estimate the fish at taping at least 16".
This short lived adrenaline rush provides enough fuel to fish some more. Two hours more, in fact. Filled with more splashes (huge fish splashes, sometimes). Missed takes. More hooked rose bushes. More thoughts of wrapping your fly line around an overhead electrical wire. And finally, around 3:30AM, a second fish that doesn't give you the slip.
I could have fished longer. But I had seen a headlamp flashing downstream minutes (hours?) ago. The thought that it might be my wife looking for me was brushed off at the time. But I figured two trout were enough, so I started the trek back to the cabin. The starlight mingled with the sparse high pressure sodium lighting that made it's way through the trees created all kinds of shadows. Bears in the wild are pretty darn fraidy cats, especially during the day. I wondered if bears at night near human habitation might feel differently. I saw lots of bears laying in the shadows. And then, for some reason, the scene in the Shire where the hobbits are escaping, and the Black Rider stops, dismounts from his horse and is sniffing by the root wad came into my head. I swear I saw the red eyes of a horse (or was it a bear?), and the dark cloak of a Rider. I walked quicker. I didn't want to hear the sniffing.
I made it back to the cabin safely. Pulled off my boots and waders and hung them on the railing to dry. And felt like I was a teenager again, who had broken curfew. My wife was at the door, saying she couldn't sleep, worrying that something had happened to me, saying she was ready to wake everyone up at 4:00AM to start searching. I assured her I was quite fine and that everyone (that included her) should be asleep. That didn't go over well.
The next morning, I took a walk again. I wanted to see the spot in daylight, to see if I had missed something that I had not seen earlier, when the father and son were fishing the frog water.
On the way, I did find a possible clue as to what the fish were feeding on at night.
Turns out I had not missed anything. The water had changed from a shallow, mostly featureless still frog water by day, into a trout feeding alley at night.
The casting lane, complete with the rock that tripped me, about fifteen feet out.
The rose bush seemed a lot smaller during the day too.
Streams change. During a week (six hot days, but throw in one cool, overcast day and the fish are active). And from day to night; frog water becomes feeding water as trout move out of cover and into areas where the food is. Senses change (or at least the weight you place on them does) - where one normally relies on sight, you now lean heavily on hearing (and hopefully not smell - it remains to be seen if our brethren in the northern tier escape the Wraiths with wings). What might look like frog water might pull a chameleon on you and turn into a three hour night feeding frenzy strip.
With the batch of warm weather and the temperature gauge on Kettle Creek on Cross Fork nudging the mid-70's earlier in the week, I contemplated leaving the fishing gear at home. But, there was a chance we'd be doing a little hiking along some cold water tribs, and that contemplation was brief and the errant thought defeated.
I had been to the park only one other time. My buddy and his dad and I started a hike/bushwack that incorporated part of the Susquehannock Trail System one Thanksgiving weekend in my younger days and we used the trailhead at the park as our launching point on that hike. The cabin sounded nice on paper and in further correspondence with the park manager, to try and determine how many folks it could actually sleep. And it turned out to be a fine log cabin, cozy, homey, and very relaxing for our long weekend.
I did a little scouting for fish as soon as we were unpacked early Friday evening. I was surprised to find actively feeding trout in the Childrens' special regs section, although I still don't know what they were taking. Most were stockers, as far as I could tell and maybe they thought the leaves were pufffed and flattened pellets?
I made it to the water Friday night, but not with a rod, just a light, to do a little spotting. Some people spot for deer. I like to spot for fish at night, when I'm not trying to catch them. In some of the shallow more open water, I spotted a rainbow or brown or two, but they warily darted away as soon as the light hit. I walked downstream a bit, but didn't turn up any fish (although I was convinced I was going to run into a bear, given the proximity to people, and dumpsters full of garbage).
Saturday, we took a family hike. A winding path through jewelweed, visited by hundreds of loudly buzzing bees, yielded a small opening on a dam. But not one that was manmade.
It also yielded a meltdown of my youngest child, who feared that she was being abandoned and would not be able to transverse the slightly muddy trail we had followed in. Given that she had Crocs on and I had sneakers, she should have been able to slop through, but dad ended up carrying her and she made it back and the crisis was averted. I went streamside for a bit to take another look at the water and spotted a few trout cruising around, including a nice looking rainbow.
Late afternoon, I took a stream temperature of 68 degrees. That is starting to push the upper limit of what I will fish but given that the shadows were starting to lengthen, I felt comfortable at least taking the rod for a walk. Interestingly enough, the USGS data from further downstream showed a pretty strong correlation between the overcast day that was Saturday, compared to the sunny days before and after, and the stream temperature.
I walked downstream about a mile to a point where the stream braided into two. The left channel was nicely shaded and I followed that downstream a few hundred more yards before starting to fish at some nice looking spots. I moved a few trout in the first area but couldn't get them to commit. But I quickly found that there were active fish in the riffles. The first one I lost, greeted only by the sight of a beautiful red side. The second one, I landed, greeted by the sight of a horned creek chub!
After about half an hour of working my way upstream, I broke the trout skunk, when I landed first a native brookie, and then a larger brown from this little run.
The brookie flopped off; the brown was a bit more photogenic (and I could be convinced it was wild on some days).
Further upstream, I looked up and saw a bald eagle cruising down the valley. By the time I fumbled out my phone to snap a picture, he had flown right over me and was headed further downstream.
Next up - another little run. I've learned to never overlook these riffles that are bounded by cover, no matter how shallow they are. Brownies appear to live this type of haunt.
This fish was trying to morph into a wild fish. But his spots were the stocker orange, although I swear he was trying to grow a kype.
It was very peaceful and still. The weather was markedly cooler from the previous days and though the water wasn't moving rapidly through some of the pools, it was still a beautiful time to be on the stream. A faint hue of autumn had begun to touch the leaves as well.
And then back in the park, below the beaver dam, I made acquaintance with the rainbow I had spotted earlier in the day. He fell for a nymph (as did a few more chubs).
Arriving back at camp, I tallied six trout (two browns, one rainbow and three native brookies) and probably sixteen chubs. My kids had gone to a stream stomp of their own while I was fishing - the naturalist put on a program about aquatic life and the kids got to wade and look for crayfish and nymphs. Here's my youngest putting her knowledge to use.
We did a little more spotting for fish that night, turning up a few trout again and this time, three smallies. But with a twinge of a stomach bug, I opted to goto sleep Saturday evening.
Sunday, we took another hike. We climbed to Castle Vista, where Ole Bull began but never completed construction of his home and then used the STS and Daughtery Loop to stroll along Ole Bull Run and scramble hillside through a pine forest.
Ole Bull was a Norwegian violinist who was in love with America. He purchased warrants on 13 square miles of land in Potter County, in hopes of starting a Norwegian colony here. But, the dude that sold him the land reserved certain areas (unbeknownst to Ole); those areas just happened to be all the arable land in the stream valleys, leaving Ole and his posse to try and scratch out a living on the hillsides. They abandoned the endeavor and moved to the midwest after a few short years. I guess the guy that sold the land to them felt guilty, because he bought it all back for the same price he sold it to them.
view from Castle Vista:
remains of Ole's "Castle":
With a warmer, more humid day on Sunday, such a hike necessitated going swimming, which we did. While watching the kids swim, I observed a critter crawling across the rock wall. I discovered it was not a caterpillar crawling erratically backwards, but an ant dragging said caterpillar.
He dragged the caterpillar against the pine needles and they impeded his progress.
So, he backed up.
And dragged the caterpillar over the needles instead.
I watched a father and a son fishing but it looked like they were fishing in frog water and weren't doing much catching. My kids wanted to fish, so we took advantage of slightly less froggy (although not much less) water in the Childrens' section. My oldest hooked and landed a trout all by herself and the youngest was happy reel in a few trout that I hooked on nymphs.
Feeling a whole lot better on Sunday night, I told my wife I was going out to fish for a bit. I went out to where we had spotted the smallies the night before and after a few minutes of nothing, something absolutely crushed my fly. I was surprised at the amount of traffic at 11:30 at night - crazy kids riding around on bikes in a posse of six, with only one headlamp, or vehicles on the road, slowing down, probably wondering what the crazy camouflage figure was sitting by the stream with a fly rod in his hand. But eventually, I had another violent strike, and this time, I brought my first night time smallie to hand.
Unfortunately, I discovered a key difference between my old phone and my new phone. My old phone would flash once and take the picture. The new phone flashes, waits two seconds, then flashes again to take the picture (I guess to provide something lit up for the sensors to pick up and focus on). In that time, smallie floppped off into the water, but I assure you, he was there two seconds before the second flash.
I had one more violent strike and a few softer strikes but landed nothing else, so I was ready to throw in the towel. The family had abandoned the fire ring an hour before, so they were all in bed by now. But something nudged me to walk upstream a bit, to the frog water. The night was clear and stars provide a decent amount of light, even with no moon. When I got to the upstream stretch, I tried to remember the lay of the land as I had seen it earlier in the day. My memory didn't work so well, but I eventually found a spot of the bank that was weed free. There was a telephone right beside my spot, and an electrical wire ran overhead. I wondered if it was possible to be electrocuted via fly rod on an errant backcast. It may be, but I never found out.
The splash of a fish quickly turned my attention back to the water. And then the splash of another. And another. I could see pretty well, between the starlight and the reflections of light on the water from the other side of the stream. And while I'm someone who likes to mostly sight fish during the day, that usually is not possible at night. You do more hear fishing - listening for the splashy rise that announces the presence of a surface feeding fish. For the casting lane straight in front of me, I was able to combine hear fishing with sight fishing, as a few Christmas lights in the distance reflected across the water.
I cast, twitched, retrieved. Cast again. Upstream and downstream, for fifty yards, the water was filled with splashes every few minutes. Its the kind of fishing that makes you wonder if you know what you are doing. Fish all around you are feeding on something and you've somewhat neutralized the aspect of them spotting you like they would on a sunny day, with gin clear water. But you can't hook a fish. You cast some more, think a bit about the situation.
And miss a hookset as a fish finally takes your offering. The misses are different. Sometimes, you see the rise right in the area you just cast your fly. You set the hook. Nothing is there. Other times, you feel the hesitation in your retrieve. And you know that a fish has your gurgler in its mouth, trying to determine if it's food. And it decides it is not and spits it out. And other times, those combine, you set the hook, and for 2-10 seconds, you are doing battle with something, before it slips the hook. Sometimes you sense the fish, set the hook, fight the fish and the fish slips away, while you line goes flying behind you, and you hook (quite securely) a wild rose bush.
And sometimes, about 1:30AM in the morning, when you wonder if you should give it up for the night, and you've untangled from the wild rose bush at least a dozen times, a fish doesn't slip the hook when all the other things come together. You work towards shore, stumbling backwards as you manage to find the only large rock in the stream within fifty yards of you. You don't know what you've hooked. You realize that what was only supposed to be a short outing, which consequently made you bring only your rod, your reel and line, and a single fly meant that your net was lying back at the cabin. A few feet from shore, you throw on the light and realize you've hooked something that is on the larger size of your average trout.
And you land the trout, marveling that the whole back side of the fish's gill plate is blue. This is another trout that wants to be wild but is not. The digital camo spot pattern near its tail gives it's origin away. But you wonder if you're looking at one of the first stocked trout that you've caught that doesn't have the semblance of an eye spot visible...
No tape on me, because, well, as I said, I had taken the minimalist approach for the evening, but with a six-seven inch fingerspan and the wonders of modern technology (ImageMeter app), I'd estimate the fish at taping at least 16".
This short lived adrenaline rush provides enough fuel to fish some more. Two hours more, in fact. Filled with more splashes (huge fish splashes, sometimes). Missed takes. More hooked rose bushes. More thoughts of wrapping your fly line around an overhead electrical wire. And finally, around 3:30AM, a second fish that doesn't give you the slip.
I could have fished longer. But I had seen a headlamp flashing downstream minutes (hours?) ago. The thought that it might be my wife looking for me was brushed off at the time. But I figured two trout were enough, so I started the trek back to the cabin. The starlight mingled with the sparse high pressure sodium lighting that made it's way through the trees created all kinds of shadows. Bears in the wild are pretty darn fraidy cats, especially during the day. I wondered if bears at night near human habitation might feel differently. I saw lots of bears laying in the shadows. And then, for some reason, the scene in the Shire where the hobbits are escaping, and the Black Rider stops, dismounts from his horse and is sniffing by the root wad came into my head. I swear I saw the red eyes of a horse (or was it a bear?), and the dark cloak of a Rider. I walked quicker. I didn't want to hear the sniffing.
I made it back to the cabin safely. Pulled off my boots and waders and hung them on the railing to dry. And felt like I was a teenager again, who had broken curfew. My wife was at the door, saying she couldn't sleep, worrying that something had happened to me, saying she was ready to wake everyone up at 4:00AM to start searching. I assured her I was quite fine and that everyone (that included her) should be asleep. That didn't go over well.
The next morning, I took a walk again. I wanted to see the spot in daylight, to see if I had missed something that I had not seen earlier, when the father and son were fishing the frog water.
On the way, I did find a possible clue as to what the fish were feeding on at night.
Turns out I had not missed anything. The water had changed from a shallow, mostly featureless still frog water by day, into a trout feeding alley at night.
The casting lane, complete with the rock that tripped me, about fifteen feet out.
The rose bush seemed a lot smaller during the day too.
Streams change. During a week (six hot days, but throw in one cool, overcast day and the fish are active). And from day to night; frog water becomes feeding water as trout move out of cover and into areas where the food is. Senses change (or at least the weight you place on them does) - where one normally relies on sight, you now lean heavily on hearing (and hopefully not smell - it remains to be seen if our brethren in the northern tier escape the Wraiths with wings). What might look like frog water might pull a chameleon on you and turn into a three hour night feeding frenzy strip.
