6-9-23 New York
Each year I spend 2 days in New York for a fishing trip with friends from our work industry. The companies sponsor the trips, get guides and rent a cabin on the water. It’s a great trip and pretty nice to not have to worry about anything, except the fishing. Depending on conditions, we can do everything from delicately presenting dry flies to throwing large streamers. This year was no different.
The conditions were great except for the wind. Parts of the day were extremely gusty and it sustained for a while, making the presentation a little tough for dry flies or tightlining. My sighter was getting blown around so hard that at times when it wasn’t easing up, I switched to indicator fishing. When we targeted fish on top, we just had to cast between wind gusts or aim quite a bit upstream.
The wind took a toll on me…Fishing bigger water, I was making longer casts, and more of them to hit my target. Unfortunately, this was causing my leader to get knotted up around my tag flies and other spots. As much as I tried to be more efficient in my casting stroke, I just wasn’t good enough. The downside is I broke off a lot of fish on the hook set, and not at the fly connection, but anywhere along the leader or sighter were a knot formed that I did not locate. 6X tippet with a wind knot does not make for a great combo on bigger water with healthy wild fish. I’m really not sure why I didn’t go up in size to 5 or 4X that day, because the following morning I didn’t hesitate to put on bigger tippet, but that day I guess I just wanted to get frustrated with myself.
On our way down the river, we got to a slower section of water and the guide spotted some stripers. It was awesome watching them a few feet below the surface on the hunt for food. He had some streamer rods already rigged up, he handed me one with a clouser minnow tied on and we started throwing them out ahead of the fish. I was stripping much faster than I ever would trout fishing and that seemed to get their attention. I remember stripping the fly towards me and then next thing I know the fly was gone and a striper was in it’s spot. I continued to strip into the fish about 3 times before I lifted my rod and started to fight the fish. It wasn’t the biggest one we saw but sure was fun on a 6 weight rod. The rest of the fish disappeared so we continued on down the river.
At one point, it felt like a storm was about to soak us, heavy winds so I put on an indicator to get somewhat of a drift. A fish took and when I set the hook the line snapped at a point inside the guides. No idea how it stayed connected, but I watched the indicator move across the current to the other side of the river and then it slowly worked it’s way back toward me. I’m guessing the downstream pressure from the indicator being in the current was enough to keep the barbless hook connected to the fish. I was able to set up a new rig, cast upstream of the indicator and snag my entire line back, the hook popped out of the fishes mouth, thankfully.
The game plan on this day was to let the guide work the water with a new fly fisherman first. I got out of the boat and when they got about 50 yards ahead, I would work the water behind them.
At one section of riffles, I decided to fish the really shallow water on the bank behind us while I waited for them to get downstream. I saw a little depression in the water and thought there would likely be a small rainbow holding there since it was a shallow but fast riffle. I casted a few feet above the depression and had my sighter holding at a very steep angle to stay in contact and also try not to let it fall to the bottom and get snagged given the shallow water. As soon as it passed the bucket, I noticed a hesitation and set the hook. The fish felt a lot heavier than I expected in that spot, and then I felt a few headshakes and caught glimpse of a really nice brown trout. Fortunately this was later in the day, the wind had died down and I recently put on fresh tippet, without knots! We landed the fish and the guide put it on the bumper board to measure, 21 inch brown trout sitting on the side of the river that is so shallow that not many people would fish, including myself. The only reason I went over that direction was to kill some time before I fished the prime water after the guide went through.
Overall it was a great day and a good experience. Broke off a lot of fish but was also able to land a decent amount as well. I know that I will never hesitate to go up in tippet size if the wind is getting the better of me on my casts with a tightline set up. Even switching over to a bobber set up on floating fly line would have worked much better for me in that wind. The most productive fly was a small olive emerger, this fly has been producing a lot of fish this year and it’s high up on my confidence list. Other flies that also worked well were small perdigons and frenchies.
