May Fishing

Out a couple times in the past couple days. Paul and I hit tunnel road again and stood in the stream watching sulphurs and march browns and millions of cream midges hatch, fly around, and float down the river. There were also thousands of american toads crowding the stream edges...they were deafening and you could see and hear them splashing along the banks. I'm sure the big boys eat those things like candy... No fish rising. Only at 9PM did things turn on. I pulled 3 out of the hole that stumped me the last time out. The big fish were back, rolling at flies along the bank, but I couldn't get one to hook themselves. Tonight was a different story. Beautiful night tonight, bugs everywhere, and virtually no one on the stream. A Friday to boot. Strange. They missed out. I took advantage of the empty stream and finally fished at the mouth of Elk Creek...crazy little spot with big boulders and random, deep holes that made wading difficult at best. First cast I had a missed strike...fourth cast another...sixth cast, however, I caught a monster. Huge brown trout whose 15inches belied it's size. This thing was fat. Had a huge head and a thick, hooked nose. And I've never seen a more beautiful brown; this thing was 4 different colors of bright orange, mottled with various sized, dark and haloed spots, and all its fins had bright white edges. I was going to keep it for breakfast (and to take a picture), but literally it was just too gorgeous to not put back. Go make babies, big guy. Caught 6 total on sulphur and march brown dries. Had 1 other on that came off and a few more missed strikes. The only other guy on the stream didn't catch a thing and I'm assuming was relatively pissed at me by the end of the night. Sometimes you get Penn's, sometimes Penn's gets you....as the fella says.

Fishing, Finally

After a long few weeks of cold weather and rain (and lots of it), the sun has finally broke through and the streams have begun their descent out of flood stage. Finishing the kitchen floor seemed to take forever this week, but Ben and I got out on Penns on the 24th and 25th of May. Flow the first day was around 780cfs and it was pushing a lot of water through at Long Road. Ben caught a couple nice fish, I caught a couple small fish, but despite seeing a ton of sulphurs in the air, no fish were rising. Last night the flow had come down to 680, or so, and was much more fishable although we had the same lack of rising fish at Long Road. Instead of staying there and getting skunked, we drove down to Tunnel Road and jumped in just above the private road bridge. There were a lot of fish rising here with march browns, sulphurs, caddis, and cream midges everywhere. Ben was the master last night catching 7 or 8 with a few 14 inchers in the bunch. I had one fish on all night - but what a fish it was. It took my march brown fly and all my line downstream and after a good 10minute fight, he finally came off. Never had a fish take that much line and never wanted to break my pole over my knee after losing a fish. It's sunny again today so perhaps I'll make it out after the Muth BBQ. Libby is in New Zealand for two more weeks, which should be enough time to get the kitchen finished, this place back in order, and the school work done that is looming over my head. Fishing intermittently will be a good break from these stresses.