Luyen’s Reel-Time FLog

After our Monday outing, the three of us were determined to get in some extra innings; so Wednesday evening we hit the road again as soon as the conference ended. We managed to reach Mike at the fly shop just before he walked out the door and locked up the shop; this time, he advised that we hit the Elevenmile Canyon section. Apparently, the water had gone up by 50cfs overnight at Spinney, but the water was perfectly fishable at Elevenmile (apparently, it had been very high the last time Greg and Jonathan had fished it a few weeks prior), and there was an excellent evening caddis hatch coming off. It’s hard to believe the Elevenmile section is part of the same watershed as the “Dream Stream”.

This section, which looks like a deep gash cut through Colorado granite, feels much more like a freestone stream than its upstream sibling. It fished more like a western freestoner as well – we walked through clouds of caddis flies happily buzzing around the bushes, but you could tell these guys wouldn’t begin their bouncy little dance on the water’s surface until just before dusk. The four of us (for this outing, we picked up Greg’s father-in-law) hiked down a ravine from the road staked out our spots. The section in front of us was fast moving, technical pocket water, and I brambled my way downstream to find some water that was slightly more conducive to spotting rises and fishing dry flies.

Sure enough, as the sun descended below the canyon wall, I began to notice telltale rises – for the most part in the swift water of the main current, but also alongside big pieces of structure (for the most part, big boulders). At one point, I worked a small run where I could spot numerous fish rising happily to take emerging caddis flies. I caught several fish, the first on a dropper, but the rest on the dries. Jonathan came down to fish near me, and I moved downstream to let him fish the “honey hole”, but still managed to catch a number of fish standing on a boulder in the middle of the main current.

We fished until we couldn’t see anymore, sated and hungry. We reunited with Greg and his father-in-law around 9PM, and debriefed over beers. Apparently, they had driven upstream to find better dry fly water, and had fished a slower flow, where they had been able to target a number of risers, all of whom had proven to be warier than the happy fish Jonathan and I had fished.

Of course, by the time we returned to Woodland Park, the fly shop was long closed, so we pulled up to Mike’s house, where we found him playing darts and drinking beers with his roommate, Kyle (an ex-banker-turned-PHP-programmer-qua-trout-bum). We hung out with Mike and Kyle until the wee hours, comparing fishing notes and shooting darts. What a great night. Sometimes, it’s nice to remember what it’s like to live the life we took for granted back in the day!

Thanks Greg, Mike, and Kyle for an incredible experience.

One of several trout taken during a wonderful evening caddis fly hatch on the Elevenmile stretch of the South Platte.

The unsavory threesome that put a serious hurting on some unsuspecting Colorado salmonids.

Please be advised that these fishermen are armed and dangerous. Any fish that comes in contact with one of these bad-ass long-rodders should grow legs and run for the hills….

Our annual EduStat conference was held in Colorado Springs this summer, and it gave me an opportunity to fish with Jonathan and Greg Wilborn on Greg’s home waters on the North Fork of the South Platte. We headed out to The Peak Fly Shop in Woodland Park Monday morning to get outfitted by Mike Keith. Though our original plans were to hit the Elevenmile Canyon section below Elevenmile Reservoir, Mike encouraged us to fish the “Miracle Mile” or “Dream Stream” section between Spinney Reservoir and the Elevenmile Reservoir. This section is a meandering meadow creek that flows clear and cold from the bottom of Spinney Reservoir. Apparently, the flows had diminished to a very fishable level (roughly 300cfs), and there was a good morning caddis hatch (Mike thought it was early for good trico activity, and that the PMD’s had subsided , but the fish would be focused on these #18 grey Trichopteras).

As we arrived at the stream, a fair number of tricos did mistake our windshield for the water; in fact, there were few of these bugs as we made our way to the stream itself. Though we were itching to get on the water, and I was personally feeling a bit like a slacker for due to our 8AM arrival, there was little activity for the first half-an-hour. As I worked likely holding water with an elk hair caddis and a fluorescent green pupa dropper, I gradually started to notice infrequent, subtle rises. I fooled my first fish on the dropper – a small brown that took my fly as it dangled suspended at the head of a downstream riffle. I took my next fish directly upstream on the dry. This one was working the inside edge of a bend between a rock and the main current. After hooking a couple more fish at this spot, I moved around the corner and fished a long, broad pool. Almost immediately, I spotted a bigger fish porpoising in the middle of the pool. Five or six casts later, and I was fastened to an 18” ‘bow that eventually came unbuttoned as he played tug-of-war with me from the main current. That got the adrenaline going! Soon afterwards, Jonathan, who had been fishing a narrow run across the creek from me, yelled for me to come over, and I found him locked in a similar tug-of-war. This time, Jonathan won the battle, and hauled a beautiful 18” ‘bow out of the water. We had several more wonderful hours of this sort of fishing – battling big, strong, smart fish that preferred dries to nymphs and tested our 5X tippets and blood knots. Jonathan lost a big 20+” brown after fighting it downstream for several hundred feet. Greg lost a big brown that took off downstream as well, darting between boulders and under deadfall. We left the stream around 3, oblivious to the hummingbird-sized Rocky Mountain mosquitoes, grueling sun, and dry heat. What an incredible outing!

Jonathan’s nice rainbow.

I arrived to moderate trico activity on a cool, grey July morning along the heritage section of the Little Lehigh. Fish rose steadily from around 8AM until 10:30, feeding very selectively. I had many refusals, and had to change flies often, but the good ol’ Griffith’s Gnat seemed to be the favorite fly yet again. I missed a good number of fish, but managed to land a few nice ones before having to pack it in to drive back home.

I fished the Monocacy on a cloudy, muggy Saturday after Independence Day. Air temperature was in the low 80’s, and the sun did its best to peak out between intermittent downpours. Having just tied a brace of snow shoe rabbit tinsel-tail emergers and Griffith Gnats, I headed to the first pool loaded for bear. To my surprise, I spotted a lame doe hiding along the bank. More than an hour later, I was told by the Bethlehem police that there was nothing to do but let the injured deer “die a natural death”. Later, I called the southeast PA game commission, which obliged by sending an officer out to put the poor doe down.

I didn’t fish the first pool, as a measure of respect for the injured deer. And I wasn’t able to raise any fish on the rabbit fly, but I did fool a couple on a #20 beadhead nymph dropper and a #16 black ant. I fished up to the outflow pipe, finding a number of fish upstream of the second pool (and catching a nice brown in the pocket water below the outflow). I also had a big fish lunge at my indicator in the left-hand eddy below the outflow.

WSW winds swinging around to northerly winds – beautiful weather, despite hot haze, fog, and high temps…. Thorne and I headed out to the rips, despite the new flats that were created as a result of the new cut through the outer beach. We spotted several fish working the rips, despite the neap tide.

I boated a huge 36” bass on a squid fly. Thorne caught another big fish of similar size. We croaked my fish, and headed out the next day for some similar action. Thorne boated another big fish on day two, after several hours of intense frustration. On Saturday night, I hooked a nice fish right in front of the Sparkman compound on a big popper, casting to popping sounds off their beach.

Mid-70’s air temps, seasonal flows over Passover weekend.  Hit the first pool at Berry’s Bridge.  Fish holding in the usual spots, just subtly dimpling the surface. Fish were highly selective and unresponsive to the usual offerings.  Switched to a homebrewed #18 rabbit foot, gold tinsel emerger, and despite a cast out of the feeding lane, caught a big 15” brown, which greyhounded left-to-right to take the fly.

Fathers Day weekend was hot and humid, with the stream running low and clear.  Virtually no signs of life in the first pool, but some subtle risers in the second pool and in the tail of the flat upstream of the pool.  Again, it was the rabbit foot emerger that elicited a vicious left to right take by a 12” brown that was dimpling the slow current under an overhang on the left side of the pool.  Yet again, the cast was off line, but the fish did not want to let the offering get by.

What a fly!

Low 80’s after an unexpected downpour. 4PM. Low water conditions. Berry’s Bridge section.

Yom Kippur weekend was supposed to be picture perfect, but we awoke Saturday morning to rain and grey skies. Thankfully, the skies cleared by mid afteroon, although a brief rain passed through again around 2PM. I decided to hit the Berry’s Bridge section of the Mo. The water was running very low and clear, despite the morning rain. I waded beneath the first pool. As expected, I spied the regular rises of the pool’s local denizens. They were subtle dimples, with the occasional fin breaking the water’s plane. I had tied on a large black ant, and quickly, I hooked a wild brownie on the downstream side of the drop off along the right hand bank. I caught another brownie along the bank soon after the first – this one greyhounding right to left in pursuit of the big ant. But the trout in the middle of the current ignored my offering repeatedly until I tied on an emerger. This resulted in two good hits, but I failed to set the hook. I replaced the emerger with a bead head hare’s ear nymph. In quick succession, I hooked four fish, and landed a big, feisty rainbow who dunked the indicator ant almost as soon as the nymph hit the water. Lesson learned: the trout along the bank were opportunistically keying on terrestrials, but the fish in the middle of the current were showing their dorsal fins as they feasted on bugs in the middle of the water column.

Next, I hit the second pool. Again, I could see the subtle dimpling of fish taking emergers. I caught two fish in quick succession on the nymph. Wading further into the pool I was startled by an explosive splash. A monster trout? A wayward pike? Nope: a giant fruit from an overhanging tree unloading its payload against an unwitting angler. As I moved up into the middle of the pool to cast to upstream fish, I noticed a pack of suckers holding near my feet. A trout darted out from the rocks along the right bank and back under the rocks, startled by my proximity to his hideout. I watched as a sucker swam into the trout’s lair, and laughed aloud as the trout chased it away three times while desperately avoiding my wader-clad legs. Splosh… SPLOSH! Two more explosions, each closer to my unprotected head. I called it an afternoon having hooked a dozen trout and landed two beauts.

80’s, blue skies, seasonal flows

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a report.
Late August, a beautiful, but windy day. I decided to visit the concrete factory and fish a beetle under the overhanging brush.  Seeing no rises as I walked the first section of the beat, I dropped a small bead head nymph behind the beetle and lay a cast under a deep pocket along the far bank.  The beetle went down almost immediately. I set the hook and was fastened to a good fish.  The 15" brownie was in full spawn regalia and fought hard before succumbing to the net.  I failed to catch another fish the rest of the afternoon!

Mid-80’s air temps.  Full moon.

For the first time in five years, I didn’t book a trip with a guide out of Punta Rassa during spring break.  Instead, the week was divided in half between Disney World and Sanibel, so I made the painful decision to limit my fishing to trash fishing on the beach outside the in-laws’ condo and car-bound forays into the Ding Darling wildlife sanctuary. To make matters worse, the fishing reports from Sanibel seemed to follow a grim trend: irrigation runoff from farmlands near Lake Okeechobee continued to have a significant impact on the ecology of Pine Island Sound.  This year, instead of the red tide that had caused such devastation along the Gulf Coast two years ago, it was a tide of vibrant green algae that was killing fish along the mangrove banks and freshwater estuaries of the sound.

A notable casualty of the “green tide” was the turtle grass – and hence, the snapping shrimp that constituted the essential base of Sanibel’s aquatic food pyramid.  I bought an aerator for our shrimp bucket only to find that the usual shrimp suppliers (Bailey’s, Tarpon Bay) had nothing to offer.  Only the Bait Box had shrimp, and, as I learned the hard way, they were out of shrimp well before noon.

On the bright side, consistent warm weather had enlivened the local snook and other predatory piscatorial species.  On my first trip into the sanctuary, I nailed two snook and a small jack at the third culvert casting a Clouser around the uptide side of the road.  Back at the condo, the few shrimp we were able to horde were fastened to bait hooks and quickly devoured by trout and whiting.  Poppie caught a couple of nice fish and Alaina reeled in a big trout – so mission accomplished as far as keeping the family’s interest level at a high level.

On the last full day of our vacation (Sunday), I took my last lick tour through the sanctuary armed with two fly rods, a spinning rod, and a bucket of shrimp.  I fished the first culvert with the spinning rod and a shrimp, hoping to get the proverbial monkey off my back.  Despite the persistent sounds of snook busting bait under the road, my shrimp was untouched as it made drift after drift through the culvert. 

The second culvert was closed, and the freshwater side was filled with muck and algae.  I headed quickly for the nearby third culvert and traded the live shrimp for a Cousin It at the end of my 8-wt fly rig.  It was here that I had snagged a couple of fish the last time I had visited the park, and I worked the waters outside the culvert methodically – with a sense of quiet expectation.  After a few casts had yielded no interest, I casually drifted the fly back under the culvert.  The fly made it no farther than the first stanchion before it was devoured by a snook.  Unprepared, I set the hook as best I could, but the big fish stayed tethered for only a few seconds before pulling the tippet from the shock leader. Angler error: I hadn’t checked the terminal connections before tying on the fly, and the snook made me pay for this oversight.

The brief tussle caused a stir among the other anglers at the culvert, but after a few more drifts with a tan and white Clouser (Murphy had made damn sure that the Cousin It now firmly lodged in the snook’s jaw was the only one I had had in my fly box) I decided to make my way to the next culvert.

It took only two more drifts under the fourth culvert before I was tied fast to a big snook – this time, the fish hit the fly as I stripped it back towards the culvert’s mouth.  This time, the knots held tight and the shock leader did its job.  It wasn’t terminal tackle this time that conspired against the angler – it was the culvert itself, and the snook’s fighting instincts.  As soon as he was hooked, the fish made a blistering run towards the far side of the culvert.  Discovering that the gates were closed, he made a quick U-turn and headed in the other direction, wrapping himself around the stanchion at my side of the culvert.  I let the line go slack just long enough for the fish to unwrap himself, then reared back on the rod to force him through the nearside opening of the culvert.  A few minutes later, I lipped the snook and weighed him with a scale that had been handed to me by another angler.  Surprisingly, the fish weigh in at only five pounds – but at 24 inches, the fish seemed far beefier.

80’s air temps, dry.

River running low and clear.

Hit the LL at 8:40 on Labor Day weekend. Crossed the bridge to avoid congestion, though there were fewer anglers than I expected on a beautiful Labor Day Sunday. The trikes were already on the water, and I hopped past the first meadow stationing myself at the first pool along the lower trail. There were fish everywhere leisurely sipping trikes from the surface. I caught and released three fish before anyone around me had hooked up – all on a
Griffith’s Gnat. Most of my success came on downstream drifts. I hooked a large brown, but tethered to 8X monofilament, the trout broke off after a valiant fight. After the hatch slowed, I headed upstream to the Kiddie Pool where I switched up to a black ant, and then a parachute Adams trailing a midge pupa pattern. After several swings at misses and missed strikes on the dropper, I switched back to trico patterns, and hooked several more fish. Rache and the kids joined me for a picnic lunch at 12:30. My ninth and final trout of the day was caught on a trike pattern from the picnic blanket, as Beili and Alaina watched with delight. What a fun day!

80-90 air temps.

Water temps ranging from 77-66.7.

3-5 knots increasing to 5-7.

Despite four-dollar-per-gallon gas at the fuel dock, Josh, Ralph and I decided to head out and see what we could find in the local waters.  There had been reports of pelagics patrolling the shores east of
Jamaica
Bay, but this was before Katrina had cut her destructive path through Louisiana and
Mississippi.  While the effects felt in the New York area barely hinted at the devastation in
New Orleans, we were fishing on the back side of several days of stormy and sultry weather, and we wondered whether it had been enough to scatter the fish.

We found busting fish under terns as we approached Breezy Point.  The radio chattered with reports of greenbacks mixed in with the chompers.  We caught a few cocktail blues, but failed to spot any tunoids.  Banging a left out of the bay, we soon came upon more blitzing fish.  This time, I spotted a fish jump clear of a wave spraying peanut bunker in every direction before nosediving back into the brine – a hard-tail for sure, but separating the wheat from the chaff looked to be a difficult proposition.  After landing a few more bluefish, losing several flies, and having very few legitimate shots at the up-and-down pelagics, we headed farther east. 

Surfing the tide, and stopping periodically to fish, the run east seemed like a quick jaunt. Sure enough, no sooner did we arrive than we spotted birds in tight packs over balled up bait.  It didn’t take long to see the telltale sign of porpoising fish.  These fish looked like skipjack tuna.  Our hearts racing, our improv act quickly became a comedy of errors – skippies greyhounded right by the boat, and Josh and I managed to hook our flies together in mid-air.  Magical knots that defied all efforts to untie them mysteriously appeared in the running line. We had a few shots, but nothing close to a hookup.

Deciding to run further east, we cruised several miles without seeing a single fish.  However, the thermometer quickly revealed the reason for the concentration of pelagics around
our first stop: the water temperature dipped to a low of 66.5 just five miles east of the tower; the fish we had first encountered were sitting on a high-contrast temperature seam.  We turned around and headed back west.  The fish were still hard to approach – the pods were sparse, and the bait moved so fast that it was virtually impossible to set up a good drift.  I had one good shot when fish suddenly appeared around the boat.  I shot my fly into the middle of the mayhem and felt a bump.  Ralph and Josh shouted as they saw a big swirl, but as I struck with my line hand, there was no tension.  Man, these fish can be frustrating. 

We headed home into the tide and wind, fighting the light chop that had built steadily during the course of the day.  Near Breezy, we came across a huge school of blues busting bait – the scene was a harbinger of better fishing in the fall; but for a few minutes, we enjoyed the easy-going rhythms of the summer blues before heading to port.

Pompano Beach, Bermuda
August 2, 2005

After a day on the bluewater with James, Rache and I rented a skiff and spent the day snorkeling and fishing. Every cast yielded a diffferent variety of Bermuda reef critter — grouper, snapper. A handful of bread around the Vixen caused a stir with the local bream and snapper. We headed in just in front of a major tropical storm bearing down on the island.

Challenger Bank, Bermuda
August 3, 2005

There were fish behind the boat alomst as soon as the first handful of fry went over the transom. First it was the robins. Then the rainbow runners. Within minutes the wahoo moved in, as did the ‘cuda. We had a blackfin tuna in the slick as well, and numerous mackerel. The wahoo were spectacular — they moved slowly through the mayhem, their vertical stripes darkening as they took stock of the situation. We hooked up several times on bait, but failed to land a single wahoo. I had two hookups on the "gummy fly" but couldn’t get the hook to stick. What were they? The blackfin? Macks? It’s miserable being left to guess.

We landed a big ‘cuda on a live-lined robin, an amaco jack (new species!) on a chunk of bonito, a couple of macks on the fly, and a rainbow runner. No tuna, alas, but a fun day of "catch as catch can."

Cahllenger Bank, Bermuda
August 1, 2005

Chumming up fish. It’s amazing what a handful of fry will bring up from the depths.

Bermuda, August 1, 2005.

James and Steve rigged ballyhoo for trolling on the way out to the bank. Two baits off the outriggers, and two off the downriggers on the stern. It was a beautiful and very still morning. We saw a few tuna swirl as we headed out, but nothing ate our baits as we arrived at the deeper water and switched to marlin baits. This time, three baits followed the boat, each riding the near side of successive crests from our trailing wake. These too went unmolested much to our disappointment. But there was no time to morn — the main event was upon us, and James wasted no time setting up a nice, oily chum slick behind the boat.

Well, everyone seems to be getting into the tuna this summer except me. I could almost have made a cast at this guy from the beach behind Jonathan. Crossing my fingers for some good tuna on the fly action in Bermuda next week though!

From Jonathan:

“Was 10 miles out trolling - saw nothing. On the way home, at 40mph just before getting in, saw sardines and a tuna jump. Trolled for 30 seconds and brought him in. Probably could have hooked up on fly with right equipt.