One of the great joys of fishing small brook trout water is that it forces me to focus on what's right in front of me. Too often I get ahead of myself and pass over great water or fish it too quickly just to get to the next hole or riffle. With small freestone streams, every little slice of water and pool may hold a beautiful brookie. Water has the power to shape us; much like it has shaped our physical world, it can shape our emotional one as well. Sometimes, most times, I find myself too busy anticipating the future or what's next to enjoy the single moment before me. Brook trout, and the water they inhabit, push me to practice being in the now, of being completely in the present. Spring in south central PA. The waters are slowly warming up, the soil is sprouting, and bugs are beginning to hover over the water as the mid-day sun passes by. The rays reach into the ravines that traverse the Susquehanna watershed. The mixture of solid, water, and spring melt creates a ferruginous, milky stream bottom. One of the nicest brook trout I have ever had the pleasure of running into. A perfect specimen of the species. A flagship for their brand of rootedness and subtle beauty. The many colors and hues are only found in something that is true to its self and its place. It was a day of losing count, of traversing a rhododendron ravine, moving up from one plunge pool to the next. They were keyed in on my hear's ear, a fly that has worked on countless number of trout and types of water. If I could only have five flies to fish, the hare's ear would be one of them. The patterns on native brook trout are beautiful. The blue halos surrounding the red spots, the curved lines flowing down from their back like tributaries reaching an ocean, all mark a species that is native to a place, that is of a slice of water coursing through a freestone valley created long before us by glaciers, springs, and rain.
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Our first day of spring here in south central Pennsylvania felt more like an early November day. Cold, wet wind blew out the spring air that had set up shop the week prior. I didn't have a lot of time to get out, so I decided to stick with my local fly fishing only stream, which also happens to be my home waters. This stream is where I learned a lot about fly fishing. It's a small limestone creek that meanders through your typical Lancaster County farm fields until draining into the Susquehanna. There has been a lot of work done on it since the 70's in order to make it a sustaining fishery. Just a few years ago, it had a Class A biomass of wild browns. However, due to a decrease in water levels and, I think, poaching, the wild browns have diminished greatly and now we are left with a stocked stream. There have been a ton of new developments in its headwaters, which exacerbates run-off and sucks up the groundwater. If you're lucky and know where to look, you'll lay into a wild brown or a nice hold over here and there. Knowing one of the landowners has its perks. I started right in the middle of the fly stretch and worked my way up to the top section. I was hoping that, because of the weather, I wouldn't run into another angler. I didn't, however, I could tell based on the amount of fresh boot prints that this stream had seen a lot of traffic since it was stocked earlier in the month. The water levels were nice: not too high and not too low. This stream gets wicked low come June and the stinging nettles make it a treachorous experience. I stuck with what I know works really well on this stream - a tandem nymph rig with a hotspot pheasant tail as my lead and a hare's ear as my dropper. I catch most of my fish with that hare's ear since it imitates the scuds & sowbugs that litter the bottom of the creek very well. I also played around with my indicator. I have mostly been using Loon's Biostrike as my indicator. I love how easy it is to control line depth and with tight-line nymphing, it acts much like an indicator tippet would. However, there is water where tight lining isn't an option so I decided to go back to the thingamabobber. I think I had this aversion to using them because of some sort of elitist belief that bobbers are only for bait fisherman. But you know what? I want to catch fish, and if George Daniels uses them, so can I. It came in handy especially for long, slow pools where, due to lack of proximity and not wanting to spook the trout, I had to stay back. I was able to put weight on my line to get the nymphs down quick and also control the depth through the entire run & pool. I landed quite a few trout using that rig. I ended up bringing a few rainbows and browns to hand. Most were freshly stocked, so there's that, but a few were holdovers. I also landed a pretty nice sized 'bow with a beautiful hook jaw. As much as I love fishing for wild & native trout, when I only have a few hours to kill, it's nice to be able to get out on a stretch of water and land a fish like this and practice different techniques or just hone your skills and knowledge. A nice fish will go a long way in warming up your day, even when there's a cold wind blowing down your neck. I came across this wonderful article on Angler's Journal this weekend entitled "The Gospel According to Jim". It's an interview of sorts with Jim Harrison, the great writer. When I say interview, I guess I mean it's a recollection of taking the dude fishing in Montana, along with David James Duncan. The article is beautifully written, filled with perceptive descriptions of the fishing and landscape peppered with great insight from Jim. I encourage you to read it. There is one line in particular that stuck out to me. Jim mentions to the author as they drive by a ramshackle shack that it's saying to us, "...don't let your life become the sloppy leftovers of your work." This is a declaration to all of us, something that we will all need to face at, more than likely, many points during our life. So what's the solution to this? How do we not let our lives become the remains of our work? How do we not let ourselves become handicapped or torn down by our work instead of lifted up and freed by it? "...don't let your life become the sloppy leftovers of your work." - Jim Harrison The answer is different for everyone. For me, it's more of a process than an answer - a continuous questioning and reflecting of life, contentment, passions. I like work, I thrive off having a job to do and doing that job well. However, I've found that I need fulfilling work, work that doesn't tear down the cross beams holding me up or rip off the roof that's keeping me sane, work that in some way gives back to me on some level. Good work. I've had plenty of shitty jobs, and in the end, they left me feeling shitty. At the end of those days, my life was simply the sloppy leftovers of whatever motion I was going through. Life became part of the work that I was living. On the other hand, I've had jobs that, while may be very demanding on some levels, are "good" in my eyes (and that definition of "good" differs with each person). By doing work that is good in my eyes, I find that my life embraces the work instead of becoming the bystander of it. Good work becomes a part of the life that I am living and pushes me to live a fuller life. The "solution", if there really is one, is an individual finding whereas the problem is a universal one that we all have to face at some point. This is what a great writer does, presents us with a universal problem tied to an image that we all can relate to (a house in disrepair, slowly falling back into the earth), and lets us figure out the "answer" in our own way. A series of koans for us to mull over while engaged in our story. The palette of colors that make up our winter world seem to be muted in comparison to the rest of the seasons. Summers show us blazing hot yellows and deep blues, fall has all those gloriously burnt oranges and reds, and spring has the advantage of being able to reveal only a slight stroke of green to catch our attention. Winter has its grays and dirty whites. I'm not complaining; I actually enjoy the relief that winter offers our eyes. Its muted colors are able to exaggerate the smallest details. Here in February, late winter, the trout are post-spawn and slowly regaining some color. They may not offer the brightness they do in late summer or early fall, but looking closely you'll find some beautiful patterns. The darkness that has been building through the winter adds new textures, much like snowfall adding another dimension to our visual landscape; contours and shapes are redefined once a layer of snow accumulates. The little bit of fishing I have done this year so far has been mostly for native brookies and wild browns. I've found that I've had the most luck on colorful patterns. I think the trout are a lot like us during this time of year - they're attracted to anything that adds a splash to the palette of their life. They may be slow and hunkered down deep in their pools and under their rocks, but if they see a flash of blood bright red go by, they're likely to snap out of their stupor and take a stab at it. Much like we are more likely to head outside and take a cold, invigorating walk through the woods if we see the sun break through a horizon of clouds and scrape the surface of an icy snow pack. One of the most effective patterns this winter has been the red weenie. Yup, it's exactly like the greenie weenie, just with red chenille. Simple, bright, effective. What the winter calls for. I've been tying them with copper and gold beadheads, mostly on size 14 hooks. I like to use them as an anchor fly on a tandem nymph rig. I've seen a few fish dart out at the red weenie from a series of fast riffles only to take my dropper, usually some sort of simple pheasant tail or caddis pattern. Maybe it's a reminder of what's to come in a few months or what used to be: the reds that we yearn to see once the snow melts and the sun stays up past 7 p.m. or those full bodied maple reds of floating fallen leaves, the flotsam of the fall. There are times in our lives when the best thing we can do for ourselves is to fill our backpacks with some food, a sleeping bag, maybe a tent, and take a nice long, solo walk in the woods. I feel this urge quite frequently, but rarely follow through with it anymore, always finding some sort of excuse or distraction to keep me from doing it - work, mowing the grass, dinner plans, stairs needing swept, dogs needing walks, my old knees. In the end, I usually take day trips which, under a microscope with the right lens, feel like a backpacking trip - at least that’s how I try to see it. It’s on these trips into the backcountry where we are able to clear out the build up of muck, much like sediment settling behind a dam, between our ears, in order to create some headspace and hopefully figure a few things out with the fly rod and some open water. Back in my early 20’s, when it came to catching trout on a fly, I had no idea what I was doing. However, I did know how to hike, how to camp, and how to be alone. So, with a three day weekend and a box of wooly buggers, I hitched up my pack and set off for a backcountry lake. I had been working in Rocky Mountain National Park on their trail crew for a couple of months and at that point I hiked what seemed like hundreds miles of the west side trails with a chainsaw on my shoulder, seeing a ton of the park and rolling my ankles and busting my knees in the process. I was barely a fly fisherman, using a wooly bugger exclusively, but I still walked to the Colorado River every Saturday morning to try and catch something. Eventually, I began to hear mythical stories about a lake full of cutties who would eat anything. This sounded like my kind of place since I still didn’t really know what a dragless drift was or how to match a hatch. Plus, the muck had been building up for quite some time, even though I lived and worked in the woods. I needed to get out of my shared living space and into the wilderness. I needed to pound the ground for something other the work - to explore and get lost. The lake sits in a little basin at 10,700 feet between two peaks on the west side of the park. The first 7 miles up the trail to the junction of the lake trail meanders through a dense valley along a quintessential mountain creek. Once you reach the junction and get onto the connector trail, you hit switchbacks and quickly gain elevation. At this point, your legs begin to burn and you lower your head, hitch your pack up so it doesn’t sit so low, and, in your mind’s eye, begin fishing. I reached the lake and the little breath I had left was taken from me. The clarity of the lake stared back at me, reflecting off my eyes and blinding all of my sub-conscious into finally believing that I was alone. I threw down my pack and jostled out my fly rod and tied on a black wooly bugger. I figured I’d set up camp later; the water was calling me. I found a rock to stand on protruding from the clear alpine water. My feet sank into my sandals as my weight molded them to the rock while I cast into the lake from mid day sun to sunset. Clouds reflected in the water and I swear I could see the pink and red of the cutties in the swirls of the lake. The clear lake, the burning sun of peaks outlining this alpine alcove, my black wooly bugger slinging through the air. Even 10 years later I can feel my feet in my sandals wrapped around that rock, holding my weight as I cast, strip, set the hook, play the fish in, release. Cast, strip, hook, play, release. Over and over again for what now seems like an eternity. Water dripped off my line as I reeled in after my last catch and I laughed out loud to myself; I was finally catching trout on a fly. All it took was ten miles, a few thousand feet in elevation, and a wild lake that still burns in my mind. The twilight came over the peaks as the sun set behind my mind. With rod in hand, I stood on a lone rock, watching the water settle under the moonlight. I finally felt like a fly fisherman. I flipped on my headlamp and headed back to make camp. I added some hot water to a pouch and had a quick dinner before I nestled into my sleeping bag between the peaks, lulling me to a deep sleep. Before heading home the next morning, I flicked my bugger out a few times and gently released a few more cutties. I don’t really remember walking the 10 miles back out to the car; my mind was still on that lake and those fish. Every fisherman needs a lake like this at some point; a place where they can chuck what they know, like a black wooly bugger, and catch trout after trout (or even just a few). It’s good for the confidence and on days in the future where they are struggling to catch anything, they can venture into the backcountry of their minds and relive that moment. We need that body of water that lets us catch fish and the backcountry that whispers sweet nothings of confidence to us. We need it to clear our head and lift our lines. Our first true winter day came about this weekend. Blustery, cold, and raw. I decided to explore some new water in southern York County, Pennsylvania. Heading downstream, making my way through a landscape of naked trees and scrubby oaks, I met an injured doe and spooked a nice buck. Luckily, rifle season just ended so I didn't run into any hunters, though out of habit my eyes kept scanning the second horizon of the canopy in search of tree stands in use. With the temperatures dropping, the fish were sliding into their slow, spooky winter state of mind. This stretch of water runs through some farm fields and wooded pastures. The water was on the lower side, so fishing upstream and far back proved to be most productive. A stealth approach, something I'm in dire need of improving, was needed. The wild browns were keyed in on flashy stuff: greenie weenies, frenchies, & pink san juan worms drifted low and deep. They hung up at the bottom of pools and tucked in the undercut of the bank. It's always good to explore new water, to test your knowledge and skill, and to push yourself to get caught in brambles and accidentally step into some sweet holes in order to find new fish and new stories. I'll be heading back to this stretch in the spring, when the water is higher and the top-water action on point.
Luck. No, just kidding. Well, kind of. I landed the largest fish I've ever laid into the other day. I was working a big piece of water (at least for the area I'm from) that had been stocked with rainbows a month before. This water also has a nice population of wild browns that use its many tribs as spawning ground. The geology of this stream lends itself to big holes and even bigger boulders. I stalked up to one and starting casting above it, letting my nymph tandem of a prince and wet fly get low into the feeding channel before it swept past the boulder. With my third cast I thought I snagged a rock as I set the hook, but after a second, my line began to shake back and forth and I knew I was into something bigger than normal. He was sluggish at first as I lifted him off the bottom of the deep run, but he soon started to fight. He kept trying to get himself back under the rock, but I played him out. I knew he would try to take off downstream, so I waded with him and worked him over to the other bank and eventually landed him directly across from where I was originally casting. I quickly took a few pics and released him to see another day. Here's what I mean when I said "luck" earlier. I didn't even know he was there. Knowing me and my giddiness and general lack of couth, if I'd had known he was there, I would have most likely spooked him. I read the water ahead of me and planned an approach that kept me hidden. The boulder that I was casting over shielded me from the brute, which enable me to lay into him and have a nice quick conversation about the beauty of the world and spontaneous nature of life that lead us to meeting and saying goodbye. "I ain't good with numbers I just count on knowing when I'm high enough..." - Mike Cooley, Drive-By Truckers. This rainbow was easily pushing 22+ inches. He was fat, too, which leads me to believe that he was a pretty recent stocker. He did have some really nice dark spots considering he was a stocked fish. As I worked my way back upstream, I decided to do a quick run up a trib to see if I could find any wild browns. I switched from tandem nymph rig to a dry/dropper (yellow stimulator and a green caddis) and started working some nice runs. I landed quite a few wild browns; most would slap at my dry and then take my dropper. Sometimes it's best to just follow your curiosity and see where the water leads you. I woke up at 4:30 yesterday morning and headed up to Penn's from my place in Lancaster. I was stuck in thick fog for most of the drive up until I gained some elevation around Lewistown. The yellows, reds, light greens, and browns of fall reached out through the fog once I got up int o the Kishacoquillas Valley. They were relentless and beautiful. It was cold when I got up to Poe Paddy, right around 38 degrees. I put some miles on my waders and found a nice secluded section of Penn's. I spooked up some doe when I got to my spot, but one stayed on and followed close behind me (15 yards) and ended up standing and watching me fish for a good 20 minutes. Her fur was darkening, mottled, becoming the same color as the dried tall grass enclosing the riverbanks. I had a great section of riffles and pools to myself all morning and was blessed with some nice fish and beautiful fall foliage. Every time I come up to this area, I fall in love with it a bit more. Fall has to be my favorite time of year to be outside. Everything is trying to get its last bit of life out of world before things go dormant and hard. Trout seem more aggressive and leaves want one last look before they fall. The days start cold and end warm - perfect beanie weather. They browns were hitting the nymphs pretty consistently when they were swung close to the bottom. After fishing all morning and into early afternoon, once my yellow stimulator stopped drawing attention, I hiked back to my car the entire time singing that Dylan line "I was walking through the leaves, falling from the trees..." from that masterpiece "Mississippi". I had to pause one last time to take in the whole valley and its wide range of color this time of year. I was easily reminded why I love Pennsylvania, especially in the month of October. We finally got some much needed rain last week and with it came high, off-colored water. The temperatures also dropped to a pleasant degree so I decided to try out a local brookie stream, even though the stream conditions weren't ideal. When I fish for brookies, I like to use a dry-dropper combo as much as possible - stimulator/royal wulff/caddis with a prince/pt/hare's ear dropper. Catching brookies on a dry using a 3 wt. glass rod is quintessential fly fishing. The glass let's you really feel the fish, and it makes a 7" brookie feel like a brute. However, after fishing a few riffles and pockets where I always land a few natives without any takes on my stimulator, I went to my default fly when I'm prospecting for trout - the Greenie Weenie. I love this fly and have caught more trout on it than any other fly - because I fish it a ton and because it's highly effective. This is my ode to the fly which works for me. There's something instinctual about how we attach ourselves like leeches on skin to the first thing that makes us feel successful. Sometimes we hang on to it too long, and other times it's worth hanging on to for as long as needed. The greenie weenie is the fly that I've grown attached to, for better or for worse, because it's made me feel like a mildly successful angler. It didn't catch me my first trout (thanks black wooly bugger!), but it has caught me the most, most consistently. Some call it the "weenie", others the "weenershnitlz", and the more erudite (or too ashamed) refer to is as the GW Emerger. For me, I always bless it with its full stream-side name - the Greenie Weenie. And I fish it without care or any possible shame, scold, or scowl. It catches fish. I guess some may think it too close to bait fishing, but I see it as simply matching the hatch. I'll fish it with graphite, with glass, and even with bamboo. I'll fish it on my little home limestone, out on big western waters, and if I ever get the chance, I'll even fish it at some fancy New Zealand or Patagonia lodge. I'm like that dude walking down the street proudly sporting a mullet and jean jacket rocking out to Bon Jovi on his walkmen while everyone else has tight pants, tight smiles, and tight ear buds listening to some highfalutin podcast about certified humane vegan smoothies. He's his own man, and I'm my own angler. I'll strut up to any stream, tie on a greenie weenie, and start slaying them trout (respectfully and reverently, of course). I was first introduced to the GW by my buddy Scot. He also taught me most of what I know, especially the importance of nymphing (tip - find someone to take you fly fishing if you want to learn, it's the quickest way. Then, take what they tell you and practice it over and over for a few months. You'll start landing trout. Also, buy them beer as thanks and a subscription to The Drake). I was fishing my local water, struggling to catch some freshly stocked 'bows - flinging line around, muttering some curse-word infected prayers, hoping for the best but expecting another skunking, when Scot walked in behind me. He politely asked how I was doing and I admitted my lack of action. He watched me flail around a bit and then handed me my first GW. First cast and I bring in an beast of an 8" fingerling rainbow. I was stoked, even had Scot take a trophy shot (yeah, I know...). Luckily Scot taught me a few more things and showed me a few more flies - enough for me to take out on my own and start actually feeling like an angler. But it all goes back to that Greenie Weenie. My comfort food. Being a simple fly, there are only a few variations to it that I've come across. The most effective I've found has a nice little loop of a tail, some flashy wire wrapped around the chenille body, and a bit of red thread marking the connection between body and beadhead. I almost always fish it as my top fly in a tandem nymphing rig. I like to think of it as an attractor, where I'll drop a prince or pheasant tail or one of the other few nymphs I fish behind it on 12-16" of tippet. I think a lot of times trout will move to investigate the GW and then see the small nymph and end up taking that (note: these theories probably originate from my buddy Scot - see above about learning from the best). I've also landed most of my largest browns when they fly out of some little crease created by rocks on rocks and fast moving water to maul the hell out of it right as it hits the water thinking it's an inchworm dropping off a branch. Match the hatch! I also like it because at the end of my drift I can let it swing like a wet fly, making it look like some sort of caddis emerging or something (I'm barely a competent fly fishing, so take my etymology with a grain of salt). Trout will nail it then and sometimes I'll even start to lift my line off the water for another cast only to realize there's a trout there (I always try to make it look like I knew the entire time....). What it comes down to is this - if I want to consistently catch trout when nymphing, I'll use a Greenie Weenie. It's versatile, it catches a ton of trout in all types of water, and it's effective. Maybe, someday, when I actually know what I'm doing, the weenie will quietly take a back seat to some other fly, but for now, I'll keep throwing it out there with the same unabashed enthusiasm as a kid flying down a hill for the first time on a bike without training wheels screaming at the top of his lungs. Here's a really great, soulful medley.
Ah, a week later, and I'm slowly falling back into the "home for the summer" routine - waking up, drinking coffee, riding down the bike path to Shock's Mill Bridge, reading on the porch, and planning my next fishing journey. I've also had a bit of time to reflect back on our Vermont/New Hampshire road trip we just got back from. First off, we absolutely fell in love with Vermont. The greenness, the mountains, the vibe, the water, Everywhere we went, there was water and there were inevitably people enjoying it - fishing, rafting, swimming. It was great to see. We will be going back there, maybe for a long while some day. Montpelier was especially awesome.
The first piece of water I fished was the West River, which ran right next to our campsite in Jamaica State Park (great place to put up a tent, by the way). It's large water and would probably be great in the spring right after a stocking. However, it was more of a Warm Water Fishery during the time I was there. I got a lead on a small brook outside of Jamaica that I got to check out one evening. Big boulders, gravel, black bears. Great stretch of stream that put me on some beautiful Vermont natives. Jess & I also hiked up to Hamilton Falls one afternoon. I decided to take my glass 3 weight and got into a few small brookies right below the falls. This is how we do vacation - find a great little hike that takes us to a good place to sit and I meander down the stream fly fishing while Jess sits and water colors. It's a good life.
Rock Art Along the Trail
Eventually we made our way up to northern Vermont to a cottage we rented along the North Branch of the Lamoille. I got to stop in at Green Mountain Troutfitters for some intel and flies. A perfect fly shop - nice folks, willing to help, and even to laugh when I said LAMWHAA instead of LamOIL (not Frenchy...). We really dug that area - vibrant small towns, beautiful meadows that roll right up into mountains. The streams are different up there than the brooks I was fishing in the southern part of the state. Giant, round boulders giving into really fine gravel. As the gradient increased, so did the amount of random "potholes" formed in the swirling water. I got lucky and landed some wild rainbows on a yellow stimulator and rolled some nice browns with a crazy looking bugger that I picked up at fly shop.
We ended our trip with a few days in the White Mountains. Probably the closest to feeling like I was "out west" anywhere on the east coast - dramatic mountains and alpine lakes strewn throughout. Cool place, but way too touristy for our liking. I'm glad we saw it, glad I fished it and landed some beautiful natives, but it's not on our list to get back to anytime soon. It's a fine line between preservation and exploitation. It's hard for me to enjoy a place of natural beauty when everything is monetized - want to go see this cool flume? gotta fork over 15 bucks. Oh, you'd like to canoe on this lake? 20 bucks an hour. It's great to see these places "preserved", but sometimes I can't help but feel like they are being "loved to death", or in the case of the Whites, bastardized by economics.
One last thing - I think Jess & I are finally figuring out how to vacation. One of the highlights - the first night we got to Vermont it was raining. We set up our tent and canopy and sat in our gravity chairs (the ones Jess made us buy and which are amazing) and just listened to the rain hit the top for hours. That's vacation. We did miss Whitman and his stupid little face, which is why we are on the hunt for a small fiberglass trailer...
And because I've been listening to way too much Dead this summer (sorry Jess), here is a great "Eyes of the World" (gotta love that Lesh bass). Watch out for that dude with the fire. Oftentimes in the middle of the winter, when I'm feeling cooped up from the cold and drained from constant interaction with my students, I begin daydreaming and plotting where I'll go over my summer vacation. A lot of those ideas and plans fall through or get pushed aside for others. This one stuck and turned out to be a great time for reflection, rejuvenation, and landing beautiful fish. My grand plan was to spend a week camping and fly fishing in and around Potter County. The Wilds of PA, God's Country. There were quite a few streams I wanted to check out so I chose two camping spots as my home base - Little Pine State Park and Ole Bull State Park. These would put me in the Pine Creek and Kettle Creek Watersheds respectively. I spent the most of the week at Little Pine State Park. I fished Pine Creek proper and landed some beautiful browns and some beat up rainbows (all on really small prince nymphs). I spent another few days exploring some of Pine's great tribs (Slate, Cedar, etc) and some other watersheds that run parallel to Pine through Sproul State Forest. Slate Run is a crazy stream. I drove way back Slate Run Rd. to access the stream and successfully freaked myself out after a few hours of slipping on the slate-like rocks and convincing myself I was hearing Rattlers around every bend and branch. It's streamside is covered with high grass and ferns. Beautiful to look at, but creepy to walk through when your by yourself in the middle of rattler country and far from anyone or anything. It's good to be humbled by nature on a regular basis. The only downside to fishing alone is that there is always a small voice in the back of your head reminding you that if you were to fall, get bitten, etc, no one would likely find you for a few days. Eh, it's worth it though.
After a few days in the Pine Creek valley, I packed up and moved on over to Ole Bull - up and over the next set of mountains and into the Kettle Creek Watershed. Unfortunately, due to a few days of downpour, I only got to fish Kettle Creek and missed a few gems that I really wanted to get to. I landed quite a few beautiful browns in the FFO section of Kettle Creek and even got a few to take a wicked small grifffith's gnat. I'm hoping to make this an annual thing and to make it back up to Ole Bull sooner rather than later. Having explored new water the entire trip, I quickly realized how much I had to realize on my instinct to find fish. This, in turn, showed me that I actually have learned quite a bit over the past year or two since fly fishing has become something I do quite frequently. A few random non-fishing thoughts - it was really great to get away by myself for a few days and to let things settle. I end up spending a lot of time alone anyway simply because of what I enjoy doing - fly fishing, biking, etc - but this was different. Most days I barely interacted with more than two people and probably only said a total of a few sentences. It was nice to get away from the ego a bit, to wake up and have nothing to do but explore remote streams and try new water, to get of routines and to get back into just being. It's all pretty simple, really - just be. My soundtrack for the week of solitude and fly fishing including a lot of Steve Gunn. Love this guy's music. His album Time Off is actually what got me into the Dead a couple of years ago. With ice flows coming down the river, freezing up currents and slowing down time, my thoughts are turning to the upcoming year and what my focus will be. I've decided that I'm going to go native this year. Last year, my goal was to get out as much as possible and to finally figure out the motions and philosophy of fly-fishing. This year, it's going to be brookies. Brook trout are native to Pennsylvania and though usually smaller than the 'bows and browns you'll find in this area, I tend to think they are much more beautiful and detailed. Plus, the fight these little wild ones put up is a ton of fun on a 3 weight.
I'm also a firm believer that fishing for these natives pushes me to become a better fly fisherman. You have to be silent, observant, and make every cast count when your trying to land one of these beauties. Much like the blue halos that speckle across a brook trout, every movement and cast becomes magnified when fishing for them. Therefore, I hope to learn from these fellas. I'm excited to see what they can teach me about being an angler and a student of place and wildness.
That said, I'm not going to just fish for brookies. In end end, I think we too easily get caught up in the names and types of fish - wild, native, stocked, etc - and forget that the real pursuit of this is to get out there and fish. Catching trout on a fly rod is a heckuva lot of fun, no matter their heritage and lineage. Just last week I fulfilled my New Year's Resolution for the first time in my life. In fact, I don't think I've ever really had a resolution until this year. My secret to success? Picking something that I actually wanted to do - catch at least one trout every month of the year (on a fly, of course). I reached my goal when I landed a little rainbow on, believe it or not, an elk hair caddis, in the cold December rain. It's been a great year of fly fishing - one in which I feel like I finally figured out how to fish. I've been keeping a pretty detailed journal, and I'm looking forward to compiling all the streams I've explored and fish I've caught (and released). Today was a pretty mild day for December, so I decided to do some exploring on new water. I went to a stream I've been wanting to fish for quite awhile, but I heard it was all on posted land. I finally found a stretch of it that was open to the public, so I ventured down south. I was hoping for higher water than what we've had, but the water was still pretty low. I managed to bring a few wild browns to hand, all on nymphs. There were some midges hatching, but I couldn't get them to take anything on top. Still proud of this piece that was published in The Drake back in the Winter of 2011. I've sent another piece; I hope to hear back soon.
Here's a direct link... http://tinyurl.com/mg32u7m Whitman & I looking out over the West Virginian mountains from Spruce Knob. We just got back from our short trip down to West Virginia. Man, what a beautiful place. We stayed in a nice cabin along the Glady Fork. Unfortunately, it didn't really hold any trout, but it was still idyllic. Only 5 hours outside of Marietta and we felt like we were out west or up in the North Woods. Because of the length of the trip, I didn't get to do as much fishing as I wanted to. The only stream I got to fish was Seneca Creek - a really nice brookie (and wild 'bow) stream. We hiked down from the Witmer Road side. The water was really low so I ended up spooking more fish than I caught (and my dog Whitman kept running into holes). I did manage to land a few, all on little hare's ears nymphs. The hike itself was beautiful. The trail use to be a road, long ago. Over the years, its reverted back into a nice walking path. A native West Virginian. Seneca Creek Geology. We were continually impressed with the shear beauty of the place and the varying ecosystems we encountered. The above photo is of Dolly Sods Wilderness. Right after this photo was taken, clouds started to pour in over the mountain and the trees become dimmer and a dew started to collect on our clothes. I hadn't felt like that since I lived in Maine and I would take naps on the side of Katahdin during our lunch break. This is the view from the Spruce Knob overlook. Spruce Knob is the highest point in West Virginia sitting at 4863 Ft. It's an easy drive up to the top and affords some great views. On our way there, we stopped to hike around Seneca Lake. Once again, I felt like I was back out west meandering around an alpine lake. Next time we go back we'll be bringing our kayaks along. |
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