Fishing with Jessie

Jessie putting some flies to good use

All the family construction jobs are now done, and that means I finally found some time to get out to the local tributary.

1st of the day

Even the high wind warnings and dropping temperatures couldn’t keep me off the water on this day.

The fishing reports this fall have been mixed. There haven’t been the numbers of salmon in the system that we normally get, and that means that you really need to be in the right place at the right time to get into a good group of fish that happens to be moving through the area that you’re fishing. There is of course, more to it than that, and a good bit of prolonged precipitation would be a great start. 

Having said all that, everyone has different expectations when it comes to how they measure success.

Fish on!

A nice kyped out male

Jessie Hollenbeck of Wide Sky Fly Fishing and I had to work for our fish today. The middle and upper parts of the small WNY tributary that I had fished earlier were rather slow, with only one or two fish being sighted here and there. The only saving grace was a large pool that held a good eight or nine fish. And even then, the low and clear water only provided me with a few good opportunities at several of the large lake run brown trout before they became too worked up.

The later part of the day proved to be better. I moved downstream to a new location to meet up with Jessie, and with the new change we saw a higher concentration of fish that would prove to be much more catchable.

But like I said we had to work for every bite we got. We continued to change things up until Jessie found a great new pattern that really turned the fish on. The key was in using a single trout bead (to match the natural color of the eggs in the system,) up about four inches from a number twelve olive gold bead head hare’s ear nymph. About eight to ten inches up from that, we attached one small shot fished without an indicator all on six pound test tippet. Remember we were fishing low clear water, so it pays to dial everything back a bit and go light.

All in all Jessie and I managed a good three or four fish to the net before we headed out for the day.

Our success today was in not measured in numbers of fish, rather in the process in which it took to get the fish we did catch interested in our offering and ultimately to the net. In my opinion being observant, learning to adapt to the conditions at hand, and being willing to try new things is and has always been the best path to success on the stream.

This brown came out of the water a few times

Remember, the trout fishing on all our WNY tributaries is just starting to heat up. Get out there and fish.

My biggest trout of the fall.....so far!

Special thanks to Leif Mermagen of StreamWalker Nets.....the Lakerun model got a good work out today!

See you out on the stream