Drakes?

I hear green drakes have started to appear on a few streams. Many readers will know that these bugs have suffered a catastrophic decline on the main stem of the upper Credit River. I remember years ago hiking up to the meadows stretch during the greed drakes. In the early evening, Grey Foxes came off and coffin flies (green drake spinners) dropped to the water. Some of the big trout showed themselves, shedding their usual skittishness at the promise of calories galore.

In the last few years I've volunteered to count the green drake duns I've seen coming off the various stretches of that river. I think last time I counted only a couple duns.

I don't know if there are green drakes on the little stream I'm going to fish on Sunday. I'll report back.

Once in a while....

...real life gets in the way of trout fishing. I'm not able to get out at all this weekend. Next weekend, I may venture a little further afield than my usual haunts to check out a beautiful little brook trout stream that holds plenty of beautiful little brook trout, and a few beautiful big brook trout too, as well an occasional fat brown, and the odd rainbow that escapes from a town millpond. What's the name of that stream again? Rats, I always seem to forget. It's up just past, oh what's the name of that road? You know. I'll see you there.

Slate Run Pennsylvania

Over the past few days I fished with Idaho Ken and East Texas Red on Slate Run, Kettle Creek and Pine Creek, in Lycoming County down in Pennsylvania. I've fished these streams with varying degrees of success in the past, along with others in the area like Cedar Run, Cross Fork, and Hammersley Run. It rained a lot. One day it rained for something like 18 straight hours.

There were bugs coming off. Let me be clear that I'm not an entymologist, but I'll tell you what I thought I saw. There were March Browns that seemed to come in a light yellowy tan and also an orangy brown, size 10. I think there were still Hendricksons happening. At least these bugs looked like our Hendricksons. There were a few sulfurs. There were some midges. There were at least two varieties of stoneflies, Yellow Sallies for sure, and also a dark stonefly a little smaller than the yellow ones. there were also a few caddis. All these bugs and yet they were all sporadic. No really good hatches.

Water temperature was around the 50 degree mark.

Did I mention it rained?

The first evening and next morning, I fished Slate Run without a single rise. Then I met up with Idaho Ken and we spent a few hours on Kettle. Nada. Zippo. Nothing. We fished Pine Creek for a while up above Babb Creek and Ken caught a brookie. Later, we fished an evening rise on Pine down near Slate Run. Ken hooked into a hefty trout, and the rod he was using collapsed at the ferrule. He had caught much bigger fish than this one on this Winston graphite rod without a problem. There must have been some kind of weakness in the ferrule and finally it collapsed. Fortunately he brought a spare along.

East Texas Red showed up along the way and we walked into a stretch of Slate Run. Slate Run is a beautiful stream that holds a good population of hard-to-catch trout. It is very clear with many riffles and runs and some deep pools. Soon after we started fishing, I found a fantastic deep run along the base of a cliff, shaded both by the cliff and by the overhanging limbs of several trees. I started lobbing a parachute March Brown under the tree limbs and quickly hooked what turned out to be a powerful 17 inch wild brown. I had a great deal of trouble landing this fish. It took a run downstream and actually made its way over a small plunge pool and down two more runs, before I landed and released the trout. It turned out to the be the best trout of a trip characterized by cold, rain and disinterested trout.

Please see my posts about this trip "We are hard on this planet" and "I know I promised a lot of pictures" on my other blog, mister anchovy.

Back next week....

Tuesday after work I'm aiming the anchovy-mobile south and heading to Pennsylvania for a few days of fly fishing. I'm meeting up with a good friend of mine in the mountains, where we'll try to fool a few streambred browns and brookies.

Usually we fish Pennsylvania before our season opens, if only to get out on a trout stream a couple weeks early. Our timing this time around is linked to my friend's schedule, as he is in the state to spend some time with family. Although it is difficult to leave Ontario rivers just when they're getting going, I'm always up for an adventure, and the Pennsylvania streams ought to be at their best right now.

I expect to post again next Monday.

Good hatch - no trout

Today was such a beautiful day to be on a river. The sky was bright and the temperature was perfectly cool. There was a good Hendrickson emergence, and scattered olives for much of the day, but I only saw one rising trout all day. I fished nymphs and soft-hackles and Usuals until the hatch stopped. No success. I switched to a streamer and had two good trout smack it, both of which I failed to hook.

So, no trout today, but a lovely day.

Tuesday next week, after work, I'm heading down to Pennsylvania for a few days. I'll take lots of pictures.

Ants

For years I didn't use ants, for one simple reason. Under most conditions, I couldn't see them. Then, some years ago, I came across a pattern for a parachute ant in a magazine. I don't recall who originated it, so if anyone knows, please let me know so I can give him or her credit. I've made a few adjustments over the years. Tonight I tied some using foam posts, but I use all kinds of materials for parachute posts. I'm really not that fussy, as long as they are visible and as long as the fly floats right. I tie them so that if you look from underneath, you can clearly see the segmentation. I know somebody out there is going to say, OK Mister Anchovy, you know as well as I do that ants don't have dun-coloured legs. What's with the dun hackle. When I started tying these, I didn't have any black hackle, so I tried them with various different hackle choices. I found that in my experience at least, the hackle colour didn't matter at all. As a result, I've settled on dun hackle, both because I almost always have some on the tying bench and because it's fairly visible to the fisherman.

You can see by the photos that I'm not a fancy fly tier. As I once said to a friend of mine, I tie workingman's flies. They do the job the way I want them too, but you likely won't be displaying them in a glass case.

The parachute ant is my go-to fly in many non-hatch conditions on most streams in my area. I've caught more than my share of trout on these. I generally tie them on a 1X size 16 down-eye dry fly hook, by the way. I've tried different sizes, but 16 has been by far the most successful for me. I've used various kinds of black dubbing, but I've settled on a superfine synthetic dubbing, mostly because I have plenty of it. One season I tied a bunch of them with rabbit and that worked just fine too.

I'm going to confess that I've used this fly successfully during mayfly hatches as well. Once in a while, when I can't seem to match the hatch right and the trout are very selective, I'll try an ant. For reasons I don't begin to understand, "anting the hatch" has occasionally been a successful tactic for me, one usually born of frustration with my inability to find the right fly.

A wet day, but the river was generous...

I stopped at a river at about 11:00 this morning. It was high and discoloured, but I thought there was enough visibility that it might be fishable. None of the usual suspects were around. I fished until 4:00, when the all day drizzle turned into a hard downpour, and didn't see another fisherman.

When I started casting, there were no bugs on the water. I tied on a streamer and caught a scrappy 12 incher right away. I learned quickly that there were good trout feeding in riffles I often walk through in lower water. A little upriver, I hooked and lost a big trout in a very fast riffle. A number of trout flashed after my streamer in this stretch of river. I tried a couple different flies with similar results.

By noon there were a few olives coming off the water, and by 2:30, there was a sporadic Hendrickson emergence in the rain. I tried a usual, but the trout were not feeding off the surface at all. A switch to a tan soft-hackle took a good trout from a corner first cast.

The river very generously gave up a number of browns to me today, none smaller than 12 inches. As usual, I released all my trout. The biggest was around 18 inches, a beauty in this stream. Too bad I left my camera in the dry car! I hooked the big one in a deceptively good run from which I've caught a number of fine trout in the past couple seasons. It's in a stretch which looks a little thin in lower water, but which holds quite a few good browns. There is a fast riffle that flows into a deepish flat for just a few feet before the stream tumbles into another fast riffle.

I've fished this stream in the rain many times over the years. Most times, I just get wet. Every once in a while though, I do very well in these conditions. I wonder if the trout were so active because the rain was warming the water? I don't know if it was the high water or Hendrickson nymphs that brought the bigger trout out into the riffles.

By 4:00 the now hard rain made fishing longer a fools game. It poured on me for the entire 35 minute walk back to the car, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Rainy and Cool?

If the folks at the weather office are right, we're going to have a cool rainy weekend, starting with thunderstorms on Friday. Now, I don't mind fishing in the rain, but I draw the line at thunder.

I'm reminded of a hot afternoon on the Nature Conservancy section of Silver Creek in Idaho. There was little doing in the heat. An occasional trout was gobbling an adult damsel fly. Very occasional. The storm came upon me very quickly. OK, maybe it wasn't that quick. You see, when the clouds covered the sun, I started to move some trout, so I wasn't exactly rushing off the stream. I climbed up the bank when the first drops fell. I was a ten minute walk from the car, and suddenly I was in the middle of a fierce thunderstorm, lightning flashing all around me. There was no place to hide and no place to go, so I threw my rod away and hunkered down low and took the storm. It lasted only 20 minutes, and in a way it was very beautiful, but it was also very scary.

Anyway, a little rain is fine, and as long as there is no lightning and as long as the streams aren't blown out, I plan on giving it a go.