Luyen’s Reel-Time FLog

Jonathan Harber’s BF Tuna

Originally uploaded by djbeatbot.

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.

Hot but dry—temps in the 90’s.

Low water.  

8 fish – some monsters.

We made a day trip back out to see Rachel’s dad, who is recovering from triple bypass surgery.  This after my own father had a complicated bypass surgery only three months earlier.  These are life-altering events – certainly for those who go under the knife, but also for those who stand on the sidelines.  I arrived at the Heritage section of the Little Lehigh with a renewed sense of appreciation for the opportunity I had been afforded.

With little time to make a go of this outing, I headed straight across the bridge to the Kiddie Pool (or whatever it’s called).  There were very few fishermen on the stream – a welcome relief after the July Fourth madhouse.  Along the way, I stopped to fish a scum sucker working a small notch in the bank.  How is it that after having caught thousands of trout, my arms still turn to jelly tying a leader or a fly to a tippet when I know that a fish awaits?  It must have taken me twenty minutes to tie a respectable blood knot and hitch a thorax dun sulfur imitation to my #8 tippet.  For all of that, I managed to leave the fly in the trout’s mouth without wetting my net….

I headed up to the Kiddie Pool only to find a mullet-clad angler working a veritable trout convention assembled in the narrowed flows of a water-deprived pool.  I stood for a few minutes just taking in the beauty of the scenery – a number of big fish laid up like u-boats in klieg lights as the morning sun spread its long fingers across the gentle flows.  Finally, as my patience wore thin, I asked permission to work the fish at the head of the pool.  One cast. And I was fast to a fish on the sulfur.  Theory supported if not definitively proven.  Unfortunately, poor angling greatly impinged on the final results: I left half my fly box in the local denizens.  I spent an hour trying to catch the brownie that had made off with my first fly to no avail.  

My next strategy was to tie a small midge pupa (literally a #24 black and gold speck of thread) behind the dun.  Sure enough, this aroused considerable interest, though I failed miserably to discern the takes from the refusals.  Highlight of the day: I managed to hook a monster brownie (at least 18, but probably 20 inches) who battled me for a few minutes before breaking off my #8 tippet.  I never had a chance, and I knew it.  But just having hooked him emboldened me.  It was by far the largest fish I had hooked on the LL in quite some time (I vaguely remember accidentally hooking an enormous fish on a beadhead nymph during one of my first LL outings).  After that, I continued to have some success (despite losing several more flies) on thorax flies and droppers – Brassies, Al’s Rats, various other midgy-looking things – before packing it in.  I netted a big native ‘bow and a big native brown.  These fish seemed very healthy and feisty – uncharacteristic for this stream and this pool!  I bumped into an angler on the way back to the lot who had caught fish on a beetle.  Same idea as my unlikely hero, the thorax sulfur.  I fished a beetle to a couple more fish before packing it in, but it was consistently refused.

80’s, average flows despite recent rains.

2 fish, despite some hard fishing.

I haven’t been very good about keeping my journal entries up-to-date.  May was
Andros and some legendary bonefishing.  I really haven’t had a chance to wet a line since then – the spring season came and went in about a week here in the Big Apple.  So it wasn’t until Independence Day weekend that I was able to fish – in
Bethlehem on the Little Lehigh. 

I went out early on Sunday, July 3 to see if the tricos were around.  I arrived at the Heritage section around 9:00AM.  The lot was filled, and it took two turns through before I found two cars I could squeeze between.

The stream was in typical summer form.  Trout were laid up in the usual spots.  The flow was average and the water a bit stained from the heavy rains during the previous two days.  I crossed the bridge and scanned the shrub line for bugs.  A cloud of small flies cavorted in midair, but nary a one took a plunge in the spring-fed waters below.  I reluctantly headed towards the Kiddie Pool determined to find a fishto fool (actually, I now suspect this is the pool just downstream of what the locals call the Kiddie Pool).  As usual, there were lots of fish.  A father was fishing with his son, who looked to be between Beili’s and Alaina’s age.  I hopped past them and fished the head of the pool.  It was tough fishing – I’m not sure if it was from not having fished the LL for some time, or some other confluence of factors, but I had a devil of a time fooling and hooking the fish. 

Soon afterwards, a salty old sport ambled into the spot vacated by the father and son team, and we started chatting.  I mused about the bugs I had seen earlier in the morning, and the lack of interest from the trout below them – he called them “false tricos,” a term I had never heard.  Evidently, these are some species of mayfly that come off just before the real trikes.  They are characterized by a vertical, almost caddis-like flight path, as opposed to the distinctively horizontal behavior of the real deal.  To prove his point, Salty had pumped the tummies of a few trout he had bagged, and he proceeded to show me some formless black specs.  Whatever – I’ll take his word for it.  In any event, the trout weren’t interested in any of my trike imitations.  We talked flies for awhile – I, extolling the virtues of the
Griffith’s Gnat; Salty singing the praises of Al’s Rat.  Salty handed me a Rat to try.  It’s hard to imagine anything simpler than this fly – can it really matter what materials you use when you’re tying a #24 midge pupa?  But I dutifully tied it behind a #18 sulfur thorax dun (as an indicator) and gave it a go.  Wouldn’t you know it?  I hooked two fish almost immediately on the indicator.  The Rat also attracted some interest, but something about the big bushy mayfly was too much to resist when it came to the “scum suckers” working the backwards current of the eddies along the bank.

So, lesson learned: the opportunists lined up contra-current along the banks are probably more interested in terrestrials and the stray caddisflies that fall into the soft current along the bank than they are in the midges and other microbugs that inhabit the main flows.  I think they simply mistook my thorax fly as some hapless, buggy critter who had the misfortune of having strayed too far from the branch.  Some fish wouldn’t even glance at the big bug — certainly those in the main flows — but those that did tended to be less selective about the offering than they were when I presented them with a midge or trico imitation.