6-11-23 End of the trip

After two great days in NY, it was time to head home. Fortunately, I knew of a great stream that was right on our way home and decided to stop and fish that with my father in law. The kids had a play date planned until 5:00PM so I didn’t feel too bad fishing again…

I’ve only fished this stream a few times and wanted to explore some new sections. This was a gamble since the water levels have been very low, I wasn’t sure if my explorations upstream would lead to any fishable water but I decided to go anyway. The water temperature was only 59 degrees but the stream was skinny. We focused on fishing the deeper pools and buckets that still had some decent flows and that’s where the fish were concentrated. I was using small flies, with 2.0mm beads, that seemed to be the right balance where I was getting good moving drifts without having the flies stall out on the bottom.

I followed my father in law as he fished his way upstream. I had just landed and released a rainbow when I looked upstream and noticed he was fighting a pretty good fish. I quickly released the rainbow and ran upstream to help him net the fish. He hooked a healthy brown that was sitting on the outside seam of a really fast riffle. The fish ate an olive perdigon and put up a great fight before he finally landed it.

We continued to fish upstream and were able to pick off fish in most of the runs that had any sort of depth to them. With the last two years of drought conditions in our area, I’ve had a lot of practice fishing low, skinny water. One thing I’ve found myself doing more often is setting the hook when I see the fish flash. This is easier to do in low clear water and it occurs most often when I get a take on the drop, as soon as the flies hit the water. At this point, I see the flash but I don’t have great contact yet, so my sighter doesn’t always move. The first time I tried this, I was nervous that I might have foul hooked the fish. Just because I saw a flash, doesn’t mean it took the fly, it could have been getting out of the way. But every single time it’s happened, it’s been hooked in the mouth. More proof that I need to always work on things to improve, for now, it’s getting into contact as quick as I can during the drift.

Some of the takes were very subtle during the day. I’ve included some video clips below, hopefully you can see the slightest hesitation in the sighter when I set the hook on the fish. Sometimes that’s all it is, just a slight hesitation.

We came up to a really nice pool before we were about to call it a day. I told my father in law to stay there and fish it, while I explored upstream. He was able to land a brown and a rainbow in the pool as I made it to the next spot. On my first cast, similar to the rest of the day, a rainbow took almost immediately. I didn’t see this one flash, but I noticed my sighter never moved since it hit the water so I gave it a hook set and the fish was on. Although I love the way rainbow trout fight, I really dislike their attitude in the net! I’m sure I’d be a little pissed off to if someone drug me out of my house by lodging a hook in my mouth, but they always go nuts in the net. This fish decided to do about 8 gator rolls in 3 seconds, managing to snap off my tag fly and leaving me with a nice mess of a leader. Perfect way to end the day.