Irondequoit steel!

After a very busy week of unpacking from a family reunion, getting ready for Katies birthday party this past weekend, and missing out on a invitation to the West Canada......I needed to wet a line!!!!!

Late last week my family and I met some friends from our church at Irondequoit creek for some fishing and a picnic. While the kids played and the wives talked, Dan and I rigged our rods. You guys remember Dan!

I had met Dan a number of years ago at church. And while we talked the topic of fishing came up. I told him I was a fly fisherman and that he should come out with me sometime and give it a try. Well, it's now 6 years later and we have been out a number of times since then. He know owns three fly rods and has ventured out by himself a few times. With success I might add!

The creek was high and off color with only about 10 inches or so of visability. We tied on larger darker flies under indicators and began drifting closer to the stream bank and seams where the fast water met slow pockets or shallow gravel bars in the stream.

After a little effort and lots of adjusting I finally hooked up on a small fish that quickly came out of the water and shook the fly. I thought it might have been a small rainbow. But the state only stocks them in the spring to imprint them so they will hopefully return in a few years as a steelhead. The next fish I actually landed. And it was a rainbow/steelhead. I examined the fish to see if there were any deformaties or fins clipped. There were none! Was this a wild naturally reproduced steelhead? My next fish was also a small rainbow. And now I am really getting excited. Not that the fish are big(they are only about 6 to 8 inches long). But becuase the steelhead that enter Irondequoit may be successfully naturalIy reproducing. Now I will have to make a call to the DEC to see what they might say. But just knowing that the potential is there for a stream to produce wild fish is something to get excited about.

My last fish of the morning was not like the others. It barely moved when I hooked it. And when it did move, it just shook a few times and then came up to the surface and rolled. It did not have the silver sides of the first three rainbows. It had a golden shine to it....a brown trout! But it was not to be, as a few more head shakes popped the fly out.

Dan meanwhile had walked down to where I was and started fishing close to me. I then put him in the run I was fishing in the hopes that he would find some success in the high water. It took him a while to get the drift right but when he did he seemed to get a pull down here and there. But no fish!

We then all met up for a quick lunch and some good conversation. But we didn't have the time to go back down to the stream and get Dan into some trout. That will have to wait for another day. But he did finally get to fish his nice new 5 weight fly rod.

It was good to get out with Dan. Especially since he missed our 3rd annual Fly Fishing trip this spring. But he did say he was ready to go for a fall trip. Anyone interested?

All the fish I hooked were fooled by a #12 beadhead peacock woolly bugger.