Late August is Crazy!!!!

August has been a great month! A bit on the crazy side, but great none the less. In fact it has put off my usual blogging until now. So I will try my best to combine several weeks of info into one blog.

Here it goes - Almost two weeks ago now, Luke spent some time fishing Spring creek and Oatka creek. And has been joined on various occasions by the likes of James, Jessie and a new friend Ian. They have, like pretty much every other time, put a pretty good beat down on the fish. But it has been Luke who has set the bar high. On one of these outings he landed many brown trout in the 15" to 16" range and a rare 19" fish that took him nearly an hour to hook up with. And then 10 minutes to land. And this all happened in one day! A high bar indeed!

Last week I had the opportunity to get out with my boys for some warm water fishing on black creek for a little while. And the fishing was pretty good. At least it was for us. We caught a bunch of smallmouth bass on conehead streamers and woolly buggers with white and chartreuse being the hot flies. Jonathan even managed to catch the only largemouth bass of the day all by himself. There were others fishing, but they only managed a few sunfish. Like I said "the fishing was pretty good"

Late last week on Thursday I had the opportunity to fish solo. I sent the "fish" signal out to all prospective parties. And as it turned out only Bob could answer the call on this day. The plan was to meet early. A little after 6:00 am at the cow bridge. Upon my arrival I saw two other cars parked at the pull off. Neither of them were Bob's! Was this going to be a crowded morning? And in the middle of the week? What's up with that!?!?!? I knew that the tricos were still around but I didn't know that they still had a following. I was a little disappointed. But that didn't last because I knew that it was a blessing just to be out fishing by myself and a friend. And that just doesn't happen all that often any more.
I took my time getting my gear together and slowly walked down to the creek. While I waited for Bob at the bridge, I took some time to look around and take some photos. At around 7:00 Bob came down and we headed off downstream to a spot I call the "block pool." The block pool is a nice deep pool about 20 feet in length or so with a large cement block rising out of the water on the north side of the creek. It is also a pool that has been good to me in the past. In fact my best wild trout to date came from this spot, a 17" male that gave me a great fight on a 6 weight.

Today would be different. Today we would be fishing mostly nymphs. And our morning of fishing started like the temperature.....cold! And just as we were starting to get into our rhythm a guy appeared on the opposite side of the stream. At first I didn't even notice him. But when he yelled across at us explaining that we were standing in one of the best runs for the trico hatch, I could do nothing but stare in horror. And I'm pretty sure Bob had the same idea because he just stared at the guy too! He continued his unwelcome banter as Bob and I did our best to ignore him. It was clear he wanted "his" spot. He could have gotten up earlier, but he didn't. And we were not ready to give it to him. Not when both of us have little opportunity to fish alone or together for that matter. Even Bob mentioned to him at one point "I bet you would like to fish here?" Which for a second rendered the poor fellow speechless. A few minutes later the guy realized that all his talking was not going to move us, so he moved. But not far!

We then had to find our focus again. And after numerous fly changes and little adjustments, my first fish of the morning came in. It was fooled by a #22 brown midge larvae fished on the bottom. The next 45 minutes to an hour brought more fish to hand, including a nice brown trout of about 15" and a bigger fish that pulled free after just a few seconds. Fishing was now good. And you would think that I would be happy with the outcome so far. Well you would be sort of right. I was happy that we had now caught fish but I wanted to try and fish the "honey hole." So what did I do? I moved. And in doing that I broke one of the rules of fly fishing - Don't leave fish to find fish. And I can honestly say that It didn't turn out all bad. At least from a learning standpoint. Our "honey hole" turned out to be occupied. And it's occupant was fishing to trout that were now rising to trico spinners. All was not lost. While we were in the vicinity for the remainder of the hour we had to fish, we saw him catch a good 4 or 5 trout. And we ourselves were able to cast small dry flies to some of our own trout just below him. I even had a few takers to make it interesting. But I couldn't seal the deal.
In hind sight we should have gone to spring creek. But the lure of the Oatka was too strong for me. It is, after all, my favorite Western New York inland trout stream. Plus each time I step foot into it's water with fly rod in hand, I learn something new. And that is a good thing!

To finish the month off and this blog. I would like to congratulate my sister and her husband on their brand spanking new baby girls. Two very healthy twins that weigh as much as an average Lake Ontario tributary brown trout. Congratulations guys!!!