salmonoid
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2007
- Messages
- 2,721
This is a sibling post to Swattie's thread about our recent fishing and packing outing.
My expedition started a few days earlier. My brother and I had scheduled the whole week off as vacation, but he had a conference he had to attend Monday - Wednesday. So we didn't begin fishing until Wednesday afternoon. I made a campsite reservation at Poe Paddy and laid my eyes on Penns Creek for the first time. We caught a few fish (including two 15" rainbows, WTF?), but I ended up spending most of my time on Big Poe Creek (way too many stocked fish, WTF?). There was an incredible amount of crayfish shell hash along Penns:
Thursday, we nudged our way north, taking in a limestoner and catching some wild browns. I began an unfortunate theme that would continue through the end of the trip, namely hooking, but losing every single bigger fish.
Merry Christmas, in June:
We arrived at our destination and fished our way up from the mouth, picking up occasional brookies and wild browns. I was concerned that some of the late spring heat we had would have driven the fish upstream, but they were still holding in good numbers in the lower stretches that usually warm to temperatures that are too high for trout survival. It helped that the water was only 58 degrees.
We threw up a tent in the parking area and then I went back to a hole that I often frequent at night. It had produced the same wild brown on three different occasions, but I had not made that encounter last year, and took the skunk there in 2014. I was throwing a slightly smaller offering (size 8 gurgler) and not getting any strikes and I was wondering if it was because of a new technique I had acquired from another night fisher, namely using a Rio LumaLux fly line. When the action is slow, I start to get lulled to sleep at night, and then at times, you get jarred awake when there is a strike and a violent movement overtakes your line and leader. With the exception of one fish, all my fish at night have been browns, so I was pleased to be jarred awake and add this 12" fish to the nighttime entourage:
The next morning, a Swattie arrived on the scene; we packed up and hiked in. In the afternoon, we split up to fish upstream (my brother) and downstream (Swattie and myself). My brother got the quantity of fish card drawn for his selection and Swattie got the 14" brown on a dry. That evening, we were greeted with a thunderstorm, as a front rolled through.
The storm did very little to raise the water level or decrease the clarity of the stream and after the rain tapered off, I started to night fish. I started off with a Cape Minnow around dusk and after retrieving the fly, I was holding it with just enough leader out that the fly was dipping below the surface as I was standing there. I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing, but something absolutely crushed the fly, as I was standing there, not realizing I was dapping the fly in the water. The loud splash and ripple got my attention pretty quickly. Over the next hour, I would hear the soft sucking sound of a fish taking a fly (my fly!) at least a dozen times. I hooked up exactly zero times. At 10:15, after cycling through a number of flies, I finally hooked up with a smaller brown, on the black gurgler fly I used to catch the brookie the night before. At 11:30, an even smaller brownie fell for the offering.
I had always wanted to try fishing a George Harvey Pusher fly (aka George Harvey Night fly), so after studying a few photos I found online, I tied up my first pusher fly a few nights before I left on the trip. I fished it on Penns the first Wednesday night of the trip but had no takes, and quite frankly, it was pretty horribly tied. I used dubbing to create the body, and the stems of the wings just did not lay flat to the body of the fly like they should of. I figured out my mistake with the wings, and so I had tied up a second version of the fly, this time using chenille (because it was a whole lot easier and quicker to build up the base with that than with dubbing) and tapering the front of the body properly, so that the stems of the wings tied in properly. The end result was a decent looking fly that I hoped to baptize with a big brownie.
I fished the fly for about fifteen minutes, with no results, and as is usually the case, was just absentmindedly retrieving the fly, when I felt a violent strike and my line started darting all over the stream. I quickly threw on my light; the fish was deep and I didn't see it for the first 30 seconds or so of the fight. I realized that my net was to far from the ledge I would need to crawl down to, in order to land the fish, so I had to backtrack to grab it. When I started to climb down, the fish finally showed itself and I could tell that at least an 18" beautiful brownie was on the end of the line; this was almost exactly how I had played out catching my first fish on a pusher fly. I maneuvered my way down the ledge, brought the fish up to net him, and the line went slack. And just like that, the fish was off. Ironically enough, and perhaps to just burn the image into my brain and taunt me even more, the fish just dove to the bottom of the stream for a few moments, laughing I think, before swimming off.
I went to bed, sulking a bit, but set the alarm for 3:45 for a second attempt. Until I got out of bed, it was probably 4AM, and by this time, the first faint light of dawn was already beginning to lighten the sky. Nothing was interested the second time around.
We fished upstream the next day, to generally poor fishing. But we did see the rattler. I have never had a problem catching brookies on dries, but I gave up on my dry and opted for a green weenie, which finally broke the skunk.
Aside from the rattler, a singular highlight of the afternoon was my pepperoni bread lunch.
Early evening, back at the campsite, I switched over to a dry again and picked up a few fish that were rising.
Swattie, gearing up
I heard banging of rocks and logs around the campsite and wondered what was going on. Were our neighbors starting to get rowdy?? Turns out my brother was looking for some natural bait - worms, grubs, whatever. He found a worm and dropped it into the stream, and almost immediately had his hook cleaned off. In the growing dusk, it was hard to tell what the fish was, but I filed the action away for 12 hours or so.
I started the night fishing a little earlier this evening. I would have had just as much success going to bed, because after fishing for a few hours, I totalled exactly zero strikes. Given the high number of strikes I had the night before, I thought for sure I would have turned something up, but I went to bed with the skunk. I set the alarm for a little bit earlier, to counter how early the first lights of dawn show up, and this time, got out of the sleeping bag without hitting snooze. And this time, on the very first cast (really a drop the fly over the edge into the stream), I immediately got a strike. I had a few more strikes on this second early morning outing, but never hooked up. I tried the pusher fly again and had one take, which I think was a fish following, and mouthing the fly for a few seconds.
I never got around to posting up a full trip report from last year, but suffice to say, I made some interesting observations on a brown. Last year, I was tossing a larger gurgler, and managed to hook up with this guy:
Later in the evening, after I released him, I was shining the light around the stream, and found he had returned to the safety of his lair. There are actually two fish in this photo - you can identify them by the white flash of the tapetum reflecting (ignore the big flash reflection from my phone, on the left of the photo; the yellow/brown blob on the right is a leaf). Stream flow is from the bottom to the top of the photo and you can sort of see a "V" shape in the rock; the larger fish is under the edge of the V, right under my light.
A little bit later on that night last August, the fish had reoriented himself, now essentially hanging perpendicular to the stream flow, but definitely in a place where he could watch whatever was coming downstream. Stream flow is right to left in this photo (essentially a 90 degree rotation from the above photo).
And sure enough, around 4AM Sunday morning, there was a fish holding in exactly the same spot, although he had grown a couple of inches over the past ten months. Although I had a few strikes at a gurgler in his vicinity, he remained uncaught by me.
Later in the morning, after snagging a few hours of sleep (so much for vacations begin restful, at least if you have night fishing running through your veins), I followed the lead of my brother and tied on a SJ worm. I dropped the SJ worm into the V that the large brown lived in (incidentally, the same location that my brother's worm disappeared into the night before), and was immediately rewarded by a brownie charging out and inhaling the worm. I set the hook and landed this brownie; clearly not the bigger fish that lives there, but a pretty fish nonetheless.
Having been up twice the previous two nights, I was the laggard in breaking camp, but we finally walked out mid-morning. I stopped to pick up what I think is an artifact from the logging days. I had found it a year earlier, but had a full pack last year and didn't want to carry the extra weight. So I had stashed it streamside, under some leaves. I initially couldn't remember where it was stashed, but eventually found it after poking around in the wet leaves and rock ledges and strapped it into my pack, next to my fly rod tube.
With only about a mile to go, we encountered one last piece of wildlife.
And a few thousand steps later, we reconvened at the cars, said our parting pleasantries, and returned to the rat race called life.
My expedition started a few days earlier. My brother and I had scheduled the whole week off as vacation, but he had a conference he had to attend Monday - Wednesday. So we didn't begin fishing until Wednesday afternoon. I made a campsite reservation at Poe Paddy and laid my eyes on Penns Creek for the first time. We caught a few fish (including two 15" rainbows, WTF?), but I ended up spending most of my time on Big Poe Creek (way too many stocked fish, WTF?). There was an incredible amount of crayfish shell hash along Penns:
Thursday, we nudged our way north, taking in a limestoner and catching some wild browns. I began an unfortunate theme that would continue through the end of the trip, namely hooking, but losing every single bigger fish.
Merry Christmas, in June:
We arrived at our destination and fished our way up from the mouth, picking up occasional brookies and wild browns. I was concerned that some of the late spring heat we had would have driven the fish upstream, but they were still holding in good numbers in the lower stretches that usually warm to temperatures that are too high for trout survival. It helped that the water was only 58 degrees.
We threw up a tent in the parking area and then I went back to a hole that I often frequent at night. It had produced the same wild brown on three different occasions, but I had not made that encounter last year, and took the skunk there in 2014. I was throwing a slightly smaller offering (size 8 gurgler) and not getting any strikes and I was wondering if it was because of a new technique I had acquired from another night fisher, namely using a Rio LumaLux fly line. When the action is slow, I start to get lulled to sleep at night, and then at times, you get jarred awake when there is a strike and a violent movement overtakes your line and leader. With the exception of one fish, all my fish at night have been browns, so I was pleased to be jarred awake and add this 12" fish to the nighttime entourage:
The next morning, a Swattie arrived on the scene; we packed up and hiked in. In the afternoon, we split up to fish upstream (my brother) and downstream (Swattie and myself). My brother got the quantity of fish card drawn for his selection and Swattie got the 14" brown on a dry. That evening, we were greeted with a thunderstorm, as a front rolled through.
The storm did very little to raise the water level or decrease the clarity of the stream and after the rain tapered off, I started to night fish. I started off with a Cape Minnow around dusk and after retrieving the fly, I was holding it with just enough leader out that the fly was dipping below the surface as I was standing there. I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing, but something absolutely crushed the fly, as I was standing there, not realizing I was dapping the fly in the water. The loud splash and ripple got my attention pretty quickly. Over the next hour, I would hear the soft sucking sound of a fish taking a fly (my fly!) at least a dozen times. I hooked up exactly zero times. At 10:15, after cycling through a number of flies, I finally hooked up with a smaller brown, on the black gurgler fly I used to catch the brookie the night before. At 11:30, an even smaller brownie fell for the offering.
I had always wanted to try fishing a George Harvey Pusher fly (aka George Harvey Night fly), so after studying a few photos I found online, I tied up my first pusher fly a few nights before I left on the trip. I fished it on Penns the first Wednesday night of the trip but had no takes, and quite frankly, it was pretty horribly tied. I used dubbing to create the body, and the stems of the wings just did not lay flat to the body of the fly like they should of. I figured out my mistake with the wings, and so I had tied up a second version of the fly, this time using chenille (because it was a whole lot easier and quicker to build up the base with that than with dubbing) and tapering the front of the body properly, so that the stems of the wings tied in properly. The end result was a decent looking fly that I hoped to baptize with a big brownie.
I fished the fly for about fifteen minutes, with no results, and as is usually the case, was just absentmindedly retrieving the fly, when I felt a violent strike and my line started darting all over the stream. I quickly threw on my light; the fish was deep and I didn't see it for the first 30 seconds or so of the fight. I realized that my net was to far from the ledge I would need to crawl down to, in order to land the fish, so I had to backtrack to grab it. When I started to climb down, the fish finally showed itself and I could tell that at least an 18" beautiful brownie was on the end of the line; this was almost exactly how I had played out catching my first fish on a pusher fly. I maneuvered my way down the ledge, brought the fish up to net him, and the line went slack. And just like that, the fish was off. Ironically enough, and perhaps to just burn the image into my brain and taunt me even more, the fish just dove to the bottom of the stream for a few moments, laughing I think, before swimming off.
I went to bed, sulking a bit, but set the alarm for 3:45 for a second attempt. Until I got out of bed, it was probably 4AM, and by this time, the first faint light of dawn was already beginning to lighten the sky. Nothing was interested the second time around.
We fished upstream the next day, to generally poor fishing. But we did see the rattler. I have never had a problem catching brookies on dries, but I gave up on my dry and opted for a green weenie, which finally broke the skunk.
Aside from the rattler, a singular highlight of the afternoon was my pepperoni bread lunch.
Early evening, back at the campsite, I switched over to a dry again and picked up a few fish that were rising.
Swattie, gearing up
I heard banging of rocks and logs around the campsite and wondered what was going on. Were our neighbors starting to get rowdy?? Turns out my brother was looking for some natural bait - worms, grubs, whatever. He found a worm and dropped it into the stream, and almost immediately had his hook cleaned off. In the growing dusk, it was hard to tell what the fish was, but I filed the action away for 12 hours or so.
I started the night fishing a little earlier this evening. I would have had just as much success going to bed, because after fishing for a few hours, I totalled exactly zero strikes. Given the high number of strikes I had the night before, I thought for sure I would have turned something up, but I went to bed with the skunk. I set the alarm for a little bit earlier, to counter how early the first lights of dawn show up, and this time, got out of the sleeping bag without hitting snooze. And this time, on the very first cast (really a drop the fly over the edge into the stream), I immediately got a strike. I had a few more strikes on this second early morning outing, but never hooked up. I tried the pusher fly again and had one take, which I think was a fish following, and mouthing the fly for a few seconds.
I never got around to posting up a full trip report from last year, but suffice to say, I made some interesting observations on a brown. Last year, I was tossing a larger gurgler, and managed to hook up with this guy:
Later in the evening, after I released him, I was shining the light around the stream, and found he had returned to the safety of his lair. There are actually two fish in this photo - you can identify them by the white flash of the tapetum reflecting (ignore the big flash reflection from my phone, on the left of the photo; the yellow/brown blob on the right is a leaf). Stream flow is from the bottom to the top of the photo and you can sort of see a "V" shape in the rock; the larger fish is under the edge of the V, right under my light.
A little bit later on that night last August, the fish had reoriented himself, now essentially hanging perpendicular to the stream flow, but definitely in a place where he could watch whatever was coming downstream. Stream flow is right to left in this photo (essentially a 90 degree rotation from the above photo).
And sure enough, around 4AM Sunday morning, there was a fish holding in exactly the same spot, although he had grown a couple of inches over the past ten months. Although I had a few strikes at a gurgler in his vicinity, he remained uncaught by me.
Later in the morning, after snagging a few hours of sleep (so much for vacations begin restful, at least if you have night fishing running through your veins), I followed the lead of my brother and tied on a SJ worm. I dropped the SJ worm into the V that the large brown lived in (incidentally, the same location that my brother's worm disappeared into the night before), and was immediately rewarded by a brownie charging out and inhaling the worm. I set the hook and landed this brownie; clearly not the bigger fish that lives there, but a pretty fish nonetheless.
Having been up twice the previous two nights, I was the laggard in breaking camp, but we finally walked out mid-morning. I stopped to pick up what I think is an artifact from the logging days. I had found it a year earlier, but had a full pack last year and didn't want to carry the extra weight. So I had stashed it streamside, under some leaves. I initially couldn't remember where it was stashed, but eventually found it after poking around in the wet leaves and rock ledges and strapped it into my pack, next to my fly rod tube.
With only about a mile to go, we encountered one last piece of wildlife.
And a few thousand steps later, we reconvened at the cars, said our parting pleasantries, and returned to the rat race called life.
