Tuesday, July 5, 2016

A River Making a Comeback

I'm not going to name the river where I fished on Saturday, but locals should be able to figure out what water I'm talking about.

This is special regulations water - catch and release only.  I fish there a few times a year, always in search of the big browns that allegedly inhabit this water, but I have yet to land one.  A friend of mine had a good morning there Saturday - fishing big streamers for big browns after thunderstorms the night before.  He got two big browns - one of them bigger than any brown I've ever caught.

I got to a well known spot with easy river access around 4:30 p.m.  I fought through some brush to get to the river.  I was hoping I wasn't going to fight to get to the water, only to find it was too warm to fish, but luckily, it was 64.5F - well within the safe parameters.  The first couple holes are slow water, and I drifted some nymphs with a strike indicator as I scouted around for insect life.  Those first few holes gave me nothing.

The first hole with some moving water was much better though.  I had about 5 strikes in 10 minutes and landed 3 small wild rainbows.  Considering that I often get zero fish on this river, or maybe 1, getting 3 fish, even small fish, felt like a good day already.  I continued fishing downstream.  The next hole was devoid of fish, due to low flows.  Two years ago, I'd hooked a big brown in that hole on a huge black stonefly, but there were no fish to be found Saturday.

In the next hole, I'd briefly hooked a big rainbow last year, but I had a few bad casts and then a snag this time.  After I snapped off my snag, my strike indicator came loose and floated into the next hole and stopped.  So, I ruined that hole by wading in to retrieve my indicator.  I fished another 4-5 holes downstream with no luck, and decided to move on.

At my second location, a bit downstream, I had a few deep holes to work, with long stretches of calm water in between.  I worked hard to get some good clean drifts through these holes, and repeatedly changed my fly depth.  No luck at all.  I was seeing some BWOs by now, and I had a mayfly nymph, a stone nymph, and a BWO nymph, in that order, on my rig.  The latter two nymphs had produced those first 3 fish.  I got no strikes at all on the second stretch and debated what to do next.  I had a third spot I was considering - one that I like for nymphing.  But, it was after 7:00 by now, and I was exhausted from a few tough gym workouts the previous day.  So, I headed for my "secret" hole on this river.

It's not easy to get to, especially this time of year.  You can park way downstream and wade up quite a ways.  You can park way upstream, walk the road, and access the creek through a horrible jungle of knotweed.  Or, you can find the secret parking spot and wade down through a tiny creek to get there.  I have never seen another fisherman in this stretch.

There are 2 main holes here, and before Hurricane Irene, there were 3.  But, after some work on the nearby railroad tracks, the river flow changed and the middle hole disappeared.  I fished the top hole with the nymphs and was honestly surprised to have no strikes at all.  I waded down to the lower hole and just watched for a while.  Before the hurricane, I consistently did well with dries in this hole.  But, some repair work after the hurricane really re-configured the hole, and it's been slow to rebound.  I took a friend in there last year and he got a nice 18" wild rainbow on a dry.

I saw no fish working the surface, so I stuck with my nymphs.  But, as I got to the bottom of the hole, I started to see a few smaller fish rising.  I think they were going after BWO emergers, but there were also a few hexagenia in the air.  I put on a small (size 16) BWO and landed a rainbow on my first cast.  In the next 15 minutes, I got 2 browns.  But, the fish were still small, and I was after something bigger.  The hexagenia were becoming more numerous, so I switched to a bigger hex pattern to try to scare up a bigger fish.  I had one brown come up to the fly twice before refusing it, and a couple small fish batter the fly around.  But, no luck on the bigger fish.  By now, it was almost 9:00 and I still had to drive home and cook dinner, so I called it a day.  But, taking 6 small fish in this river is very promising for its future and its continued recovery from the hurricane.

On Monday, my wife and I tried to fish the White.  Above the Third Branch, the main branch had a temperature above 71F.  Below the confluence, it was as high as 76F.  People were swimming in the first hole I wanted to fish.

I drove upstream to a side stream that is never too hot to fish, and measured 71F there.  I opted to not push higher into the side streams.  My wife struggles with casting under tight tree canopies, so we called it a day.  The weather the next 2 weeks does not look promising for restoring the streams to being fishable.  I may travel up towards the Canadian border in search of cooler water next weekend.

No comments:

Post a Comment