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| Jessie and I with one of a few doubles on the day. |
This past Friday – that would be December 5th to
be exact – A few of us brave souls made an attempt at putting our angling mark
on some WNY tributary trout.
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| Jessie with one of many |
My good friend and
Wide Sky Fly Fishing guide Jessie
Hollenbeck had been giving me updates from his recent outings with his clients,
and boy did the fishing look amazing. I was just hoping for it to half as good.
And good it would be, even if it started off a little slow.
Conditions proved to be a bit icy at the get go. Punching
weighted nymph rigs through the numerous slushburgs floating downstream needs
to be mentioned here only because I want you all to know that fishing was at
first rather difficult. Oh, and the ice shelves that we needed to break through
just to get into position. Can’t forget those.
Below me Matt Smythe, AKA the
Fishing Poet, worked a slow
pool while Jessie Hollenbeck geared up on the bank. I think he was listening to
Denver Miller recount a story of his first fish of the day, but I have trouble
multitasking, and when I made that first cast to a group of fish I could see holding
on the other side of an eddy, his voice began to fade. A few drifts later and I
was into my first lake run trout of the morning.
Over the next hour, before Matt would make his way back
home, we all got bent by numerous Lake Run giants. Most of the battles were
won, save only a few. And if you have spent any time on the water chasing large
fish, you know all too well that some of those battles will eventually have
casualties. Matt can attest to that first hand after a large brown snapped his rod
a foot or so above the cork, making a four piece rod into a five.
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| Jessie's hen steelhead |
In the next couple of hours after Matt’s departure, we all
took turns at various positions in the run and the pool.
The ice and slush that plagued us earlier was now gone. It
gave way to a pulse of water that seemed to invigorate the fish. From then,
until I had to leave, many many fish found the bottom of the net. At first it
seemed as though it would be the day of the brown trout. But through the wave
of big lake run browns Jessie and Denver managed to convince a couple of feisty
steelhead to join the party.
The fish ate everything we threw at them - Egg patterns,
nymphs and streamers - with egg patterns being the overwhelming preferred fly
of choice by the discerning lake run trout.
In the end I headed home happy and a little sore, ready to
join my family for an amazing birthday dinner.
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| Matt does battle with a large trout just before the snap! |
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| A gorgeous hen brown for Matt |
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| Denver's chews on some graphite while holding this beauty |
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| A golden male brown trout |
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| Denver with a nice big hen |
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| A colored up hen ready for release |
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| One of the larger fish for me |
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| Another double - Denver with the fish of the day. |
Thank you Jessie Hollenbeck, Denver Miller, Matt Smythe and
Jim Metcalf for a memorable day of fishing and fellowship. Until next year……
