Iroquois Summer

When warm, summer-like temperatures persist into late September, we refer to this meteorological phenomena as "Indian Summer". This term is probably racist, unless it has to do with the country India, but for some reason I doubt that it does. Branching off from this colloquial terminology, I have decided to name the meteorological phenomenon of 60 plus degree temperatures in upstate New York in mid December "Iroquois Summer".   This logical extension is based off the fact that the Iroquois Nation was the group of American Indians that inhabited the Great Lakes area, as evidenced by the Iroquois Service plaza of Route 90 which has a very capable Roy Rodgers restaurant.

So with Iroquois Summer in full effect here in the northeast, old man Winchell and I ventured west for lake run fish beasts. The weather couldn't have been better but the fishing was pretty slow. Still a slow weekend of fishing beats a fast weekend of not fishing.

A nice drop back brown that ate a streamer from underneath a beaver dam. There were a couple fish hanging tight to beaver dams in this river, but they were tough to get at. 

A nice lake run domestic rainbow that ate an otter egg and fought without much enthusiasm

A lone steelehead made the return trip stop at the SR sort of worth it, although we kind of felt bad for him hanging out in the river all on his lonesome with no friends to play with.

A very impressive brown that weighed 14 pounds on the digital scale. It would have been really cool if he wasn't foul hooked!

The true catch of the trip, was the trash chair. We constructed this throne purely from discarded items pulled from the dirt near our fishing location. The trash chair was an iconic symbol of the way the river treated us on this weekend. We were able to put something together on the water, but in the end it was still trash.

When the bite became completely stagnant, Clark decided to go harvest some flies from the tree across the way. Using a large branch as a lever, the clever BFC engineer was also able to dislodge and destroy a healthy section of the beaver dam visible at the bottom right of the image.


Until the next Iroquois Summer adventure, tight lines and solid hookups! Happy Holidays friends

Lazy Sunday

I do not fish as often as I'd like to these days. But when I do, it's nice to catch something.

Yesterday I drove down to the cape to grab my fly rods out of the basement so that I could prep my gear for fall steelhead. I made the last minute decision to throw the waders and the Sage 3 weight in the car and to make a quick stop at the salt run brookie creek by my folks house. This turned out to be a good decision. I had only fished the creek once before during the month of April. It was productive, I think I landed three fish that day. Even then it was pretty overgrown though, so I wasn't sure exactly what I was getting myself into, now that summer growth was at its peak. But I figured what the hell.

It was 40 degrees when I walked out to the car in Arlington and started my trek to the cape. I decided fairly quickly that And One basketball shorts and flip flops might not have been a wise attire selection. After arriving at my destination I walked along a path that parallels the creek before finally swinging a right and bush-whacking into the woods. By the time I reached the water, I was covered in spider webs and various clumps of vegetation. Bank shrubs and overhanging trees and deadly sink hole mud greeted me along the 3-5 foot wide brook. After wrestling around with trying to cast from shore for several minutes, I had a feeling that I had bitten off more than I could chew. This creek was basically unfishable. Wading around along the edges produced a thick black mud that clouded  the water and invariably spooked anything down stream within casting range. Disappointed, I decided that my only chance was to work my way downstream until I could find an area with some space to cast.

I pushed through the brush alongside the creek for maybe 10 yards before I became completely mired in a mud pile caused by some sort of secondary water source flowing into the main body of the creek. Desperate, I worked my way back into the creek for no particular reason other than to escape the muck. With a desperate final push, I lept into the stream, with quite a splash I might add, happy to be free of a potentially debilitating situation. I found myself almost waist deep, and I paused to catch my breath, letting the mud run off my boots and waders... After about 20 seconds of standing there questioning my next move, I noticed that the bottom of the creek was pretty much pure sand, so I decided that I could make my way down stream by walking down the main body of the creek. When I found a more castable location, I'd pull out on the bank and fish it. Seems reasonable right?

So I began the highly atypical move of walking straight downstream in the middle of the creek I intended to fish. But I did notice that the sand bottom in the middle of the creek was fairly forgiving. After about ten yard I reached a spot where I could get a mediocre back cast in, enough to get the fly 4 yards away from me down current, and then I could let line out and roll cast it directly down stream. I kept stripping line to get the fly as far away from me as possible... When I finally had it 12 yards down current. I slowly stripped it back in. I got hit on my first cast. Unfortunately I missed him. But it didn't really matter because I now had a plan. I waded down the river fishing it from the dead center of the stream. Cast down current, let out line, retrieve, walk 3 yards downstream, repeat... I never left the river again, with the exception of scaling a couple fallen trees. In an hour and a half, I made it about a quarter mile down and landed 9 native brookies to 11 inches. I missed another 20, presumably because many were to small to eat my streamer, It was kind of lights out. I landed 2 males that were particularly handsome. They were definitely getting ready to spawn.

Quite satisfied with my morning, I drove down the street to my folks place. I decided to run the boat for a bit since she hadn't been off the dock in a couple weeks and I finished up trout fishing earlier than expected. As I was playing with the electronics out in Vineyard sound, I saw a few splashes out of the corner of my eye and low and behold there were albies to be had! First cast in and I got a bite....

It doesn't always happen like that, but it sure is nice when it does....

Rabbits

I made an impromptu decision to head up to the SR last week. Nathalia was out of town for work and I thought it would be relatively quiet around the office so figured this was as good a chance as any to cash in on some steele. Plan was to leave Wednesday after work and fish Thursday and a half day Friday. Unfortunately, I ended up with a work dinner Wednesday night that would significantly delay my departure. My options were to leave early Thursday morning and not get to the SR at first light or sack up and pull an overnight drive to NY and fish on no sleep. Being a veteran of the sleepless nights when canyon fishing I decided to move forward with the latter. At roughly 11PM Wednesday night, I left my dinner in Burlington Mass for rivers filled with seagoing trout.

Well, about a half hour into the drive I decided it would be a prudent time to confirm the SR flow. To my great dismay the river had blown up to 1100cfs at Pineville. While not unfishable, this flow was much higher than what I was expecting and not ideal for my plan to wade around and cover a lot of territory in the lower river. What to do, what to do... After about 20 minutes of deliberation, I decided to take a gamble and fish one of the creeks nearby the SR. Friends Kyle and Miles had recently fished a creek about 40 minutes from the SR (to remain nameless) and reported that it held a good mix of browns and steelhead. The men had given me some good intel on access points and fishy water. Why not, I figured. It wouldn't hurt to get away from the crowds anyhow. With that decision made, I rolled west into the dark night. 

I got to the Oswego area an hour before light and found a MacDonalds to provide healthy morning sustenance. After the long drive I was exhausted, excited, and very much up to speed on the status of current events from listening to about 2 hours of CNN on Sirius. I waited until grey light to head down to the river since I didn't exactly know where I was going or which spots would hold fish. I had brought my six weight, which I rigged up with a small shallow water bead presentation, and my 8 weight, which would be rigged for deeper water presentations should I encounter any likely looking spots. 

As the sun cape up I found myself looking at very small water, narrower and shallower than the Swift river in many spots. I worked my way up river scanning the river for likely looking holding spots and firing a few casts with the bead where I thought there might be potential. I came upon a small riffle that dumped into a pool that looked to be a couple feet deep. I fired the bead into the riffle and just as my rig entered the pool the indicator when down and I was tight to my first small water fish.

 While it wasn't a slob by any standards I found myself a short while later staring at a 5lb rainbow. Was it a steelhead or a native trout? I'm still not certain. I released the fish and took another cast and wouldn't you know it I got another one, this one a hair smaller than the first but darker in color. Three casts after that I found a third trout in this little pool. This fish was a hair larger at maybe 6 pounds with a nice big stomach on it. My guess was that these were small steele. After a dozen of so more casts I pushed on finding the river slower and a little bit deeper. I came upon a slow shallow tail out and noticed a couple large v wakes. Did I spook those fish? Maybe. I could get any takes on my bead, although the water was so slow the presentation really didn't look right. I continued to fish up stream with no action. Hours passed and I worried my early morning flurry would be the last action I would see. Finally I found myself in a spot with a little current. After a handful of cast through this shallow run I watched a brown trout move out of the current and take my bead only a few feet from my rod tip. A short battle later and I had a four pound brown up on the gravel bar. This silver looking fish was clearly of the lake run variety. After a quick release I pounded the spot for another hour before giving up on this stretch of water.

I hiked back up to the car to try another access point further upstream. While having landed a handful during the morning, the action still felt slow. I had managed only 4 bites and was lucky to have landed all four fish. It was windy and cold and I was a tired man after pulling the all nighter. I hoped that the move might be a productive one. I parked by a bridge maybe a mile up river and hiked by some shallow looking water to find a nice deep pool. It looked like the prefect steelhead spot and I decided to pound it out here and hope for an evening bite. An hour passed with no action. I met a couple other fisherman in this section of river and neither angler had touched a fish. One claimed it might be the weather that was shutting off the bite, with the cold front coming through. I soldiered on fishing this deep pool, adjusting my indicator depth and about a half hour before dark I picked up another steelhead. This one fought better that the first 3 despite being no bigger. I was able to pull it up on the bank and release it. A short time later I retired for the evening.

On my way to the hotel I exchanged texts with both Miles and Kyle. I told them the day was slow despite having landed a handful, and that the bites were few and far between. The men suggested stripping a streamer, something with a nice zonker strip to give it action. Rabbit fur huh? It flew in the face of all the lake run trout fishing I had done in this area. But nonetheless it was worth a shot. The bead bite had been ok but not good. I bought a 6 pack of Labatt Blues and passed out in my hotel room around 7PM wondering deliriously if the Mayan Apocalypse would occur while I slept.

I woke up at a leisurely 6AM feeling much more refreshed than the day before. No apocalypse, just trout to be caught. I returned to the river near the first spot I fished the day before, planning to try out some streamers in the area where I saw the v wakes the day prior. My fly selection for this endeavor would be limitted. I had a bunch of weighted buggers but my unweighted rabbit fur streamer supply was only a couple of flies.  I began casting across to the far side of the river with my 8 weight. A dozen casts but nothing to show for it. Then, all of a sudden, it turned on. As I stripped my fly across the surface a large v wake appeared behind it, following my fly back to my feet before turning away. The next cast, nothing. Then another cast and another follow. Then a short strike that I missed as a large fish blew out of the water attempting to eat the rabbit. More follows. More misses. Then finally a big take. My tippet parted as I set the hook. Fuck.

Down to my last rabbit fur fly, a black zonker strip about 4 inches long. I went up to 8 pound tippet figuring I couldn't lose this fly. Would the fish take on 8 as opposed to 4? Yes they would. The fish wanted it. Finally I came tight on a fish and stayed tight on it. A brown colored rabbit eating beast.

Over the next hour and a half I would bring 4 browns in the 5 lb class to the bank on the rabbit fur. No slobs, but all healthy fish, and all on epic surface strikes worthy of video that I did not have. For the 4 that I landed, there were twice as many short strikes and twice as many follows as misses. The action was hot, even if the catching was average.

Then it slowed down. I fished for 45 minutes without a follow. It seemed like the hole needed a rest. I pushed down stream about 80 yards finding a similar looking hole on the far bank. First cast in with my now beaten up rabbit and I was tight again. This time a small steele. Steele eating rabbits? Who would have thought...

In summary, this next hole was on fire. I pulled five browns out of this hole including the one I was looking for. He came up like an alligator inhaling my fly down to the back of his throat and battling me all over the hole. He would tape out at 28.5 inches, my guess is somewhere between 8 and 9 lbs. Long, but skinny and mean. The surface strike was savage.

 

The rain that had been pounding me all morning was turning to sleet and I knew my time on the river was coming to an end. I decided to make one last cast before heading out. I placed my beaten up piece of rabbit on the far bank and  two strips later a fat fish exploded out of the water in a monstrous take. When I saw the fish breach it left no doubt that I was dealing with steele. A fat 7 lb fish with decent chrome coloration.

With 11 fish landed for the morning including my personal best brown I headed back to my car. I left New York fully satisfied, with a little more respect for the rabbit...