rrt wrote:
t/bert's post 15 is right on target. Unfortunately the quote fits a lot of places besides the Keystone Select areas.
As someone who has opposed the homewaters (aka spring ridge) model for fly-fishing, I am starting to wonder if this is the only way to ensure enjoyable, uncrowded outings, esp. during major hatches. Perhaps donny beaver was right, and perhaps I was wrong to oppose his model for fly-fishing.
Fishing in relative solitude does not have to be pay-to-play. If the Keystone Select somewhat concentrates some of the slob fishermen in the ranks (and they aren't just limited to spin fishermen), then that should be a slight decrease in the amount of slobs on all the open water. And with the amount of both stocked and wild trout stream miles in the state, it's still pretty easy to have a section to oneself somewhere. It might just not be exactly where you want to fish, but even on streams stocked with an obscene amount of fish, including the Velveeta trouts, it's possible to fish almost an entire day without having another angler fish anywhere near you. This happened to me last Thursday, fishing a hole that was known to be loaded with fish, but I didn't see an angler all day until close to dark when a father and two sons came in. They fished below us and when the dad came upstream, across from me, he asked if it was ok if he threw in a few times but said he wouldn't overstay his welcome. Given the location and amount of fish, even if they had come in and plopped themselves down right beside me without asking, I wouldn't have cared.
I think part of the draw of the golden rainbows is that because they are so visible, they just attract anglers' attention. Smart anglers know that if you can see a golden, there are probably about 20 other fish around the visible one and you target those fish instead. That's what drew the father mentioned above to where I was fishing last week; he said he had spent five hours targeting a golden rainbow in the hole I was fishing. But even with their visibility, he missed the additional 11' golden that was in that hole, and the much larger one that was in the hole he and his sons fished in below us. My daughter had a blast in a kids' section, but she didn't want to leave until she caught a golden, which she eventually did (on sucker spawn). She landed a second one on Sunday as well and her happiness made me happy.
I caught two myself - the 11" one on an egg pattern and a larger one opening day about dusk on a white wooly bugger. For me, the fun is targeting fish that have been harassed all day and managing to come up with something they haven't seen yet and are willing to eat. I like that challenge, just like I like the challenge of finding the trout that other anglers missed all day, or plucking the wild trout out of the mix.
