I made it out for a brief fishing excursion this afternoon,
sandwiching a late-afternoon trip to the trout stream
between work, and my 6yr. old Daughter's last softball game of the season.
What a time I had.
The water was at a nice level, surprisingly,
and the fish were certainly there.
Lots of feisty rainbows in this beautiful medium-sized PA stream:
This section has some really great riffle water that stretches, almost non-stop,
for a few miles. This makes for great wet-fly fishing, with occasional good dry fly water
between these fast runs. But the rainbows love the fast-water, especially as Summer approaches.
And boy, are they a blast to try and land in this stuff!
Most of my stream fishing typically involves me parking the car,
hopping into the water, and I work my way downstream swinging wets.
I can cover a lot of water in a just few hours fishing this way, especially when the action is light,
and I'm searching for fish. Then, inevitably, I'll stop when I come to a bridge-crossing,
and then walk the ~2-3mi. back to the car on the road that parallels the steam.
But today I had a thought:
Fish down and back.
This may be common knowledge to some,
but the thought really did just strike me.
Why walk back on the road?
Go ahead and fish Wets downstream for a while,
but then switch to Dries and fish your way back upstream,
until you get to the car.
Makes perfect sense!
So that's what I did.
(that fact that bugs were hatching and fish were actively rising certainly helped make this decision...)
Working downstream, I covered the water a bit less thoroughly than I normally would,
knowing that I'd be fishing this spot again later. Especially the intermittent slower deeper pools,
which were ideal to cast some dries.
Passing through one such spot,
where a good long cascading falls finally settles into a deep, moderately fast moving pool;
I took a few fish on wets. As I started at the head of this section, there was one fish, down in the middle;
that was creating quite a ruckus with its rises. I certainly tried for this one, be it didn't take my wets.
In fact, swinging my wets put it down - no more flashy rises.
I shrugged it off, and figured I would try for it again with dries on the way back through.
After reaching my turn-around point, I did in fact switch to dries,
and worked my way back. The trip back was quicker, as the suitable dry fly spots
were fewer and farther between. When I came back to the spot of the large rising fish,
the water was dead. But I was able to rise him on my 3rd cast to the pool:
A decent Brown, easily the biggest fish of the day, taken on a #14 Hendrickson.
Sulphurs were rising all day, but my dry fly box is pretty light, and I didn't really have anything
pale yellow-ish.The Hendricksons are well-over here, but I guess this guy had a memory for that particular meal.
Today I was fishing a GC 2402-A 7'0" 6wt.
with a H+H DT6F line spooled on a Bronson Royal 370 reel.
The "Wet Side" of this DT has the front taper removed and front taper from an Intermediate line spliced on.
(I reverse the line to fish dries, which is just the stock H+H line, with no mods...)
This is *exactly* the sort of fishing that makes me glad to own a 7'0" 6wt. rod.
The overhanging tree cover and bank vegetation is imposing,
and fighting rainbow trout in fast current requires something substantial,
at least for me, anyway. Thus: "short and heavy" fits the bill very well here.
Actually, this little rod is such a sweet caster, you don't even feel like it's lined heavy.
I was alighting a #14 dry fly on the water just fine with this 6wt.
Does anyone else here fish "down and back" in a similar manner?
Just curious...
sandwiching a late-afternoon trip to the trout stream
between work, and my 6yr. old Daughter's last softball game of the season.
What a time I had.
The water was at a nice level, surprisingly,
and the fish were certainly there.
Lots of feisty rainbows in this beautiful medium-sized PA stream:
This section has some really great riffle water that stretches, almost non-stop,
for a few miles. This makes for great wet-fly fishing, with occasional good dry fly water
between these fast runs. But the rainbows love the fast-water, especially as Summer approaches.
And boy, are they a blast to try and land in this stuff!
Most of my stream fishing typically involves me parking the car,
hopping into the water, and I work my way downstream swinging wets.
I can cover a lot of water in a just few hours fishing this way, especially when the action is light,
and I'm searching for fish. Then, inevitably, I'll stop when I come to a bridge-crossing,
and then walk the ~2-3mi. back to the car on the road that parallels the steam.
But today I had a thought:
Fish down and back.
This may be common knowledge to some,
but the thought really did just strike me.
Why walk back on the road?
Go ahead and fish Wets downstream for a while,
but then switch to Dries and fish your way back upstream,
until you get to the car.
Makes perfect sense!
So that's what I did.
(that fact that bugs were hatching and fish were actively rising certainly helped make this decision...)
Working downstream, I covered the water a bit less thoroughly than I normally would,
knowing that I'd be fishing this spot again later. Especially the intermittent slower deeper pools,
which were ideal to cast some dries.
Passing through one such spot,
where a good long cascading falls finally settles into a deep, moderately fast moving pool;
I took a few fish on wets. As I started at the head of this section, there was one fish, down in the middle;
that was creating quite a ruckus with its rises. I certainly tried for this one, be it didn't take my wets.
In fact, swinging my wets put it down - no more flashy rises.
I shrugged it off, and figured I would try for it again with dries on the way back through.
After reaching my turn-around point, I did in fact switch to dries,
and worked my way back. The trip back was quicker, as the suitable dry fly spots
were fewer and farther between. When I came back to the spot of the large rising fish,
the water was dead. But I was able to rise him on my 3rd cast to the pool:
A decent Brown, easily the biggest fish of the day, taken on a #14 Hendrickson.
Sulphurs were rising all day, but my dry fly box is pretty light, and I didn't really have anything
pale yellow-ish.The Hendricksons are well-over here, but I guess this guy had a memory for that particular meal.
Today I was fishing a GC 2402-A 7'0" 6wt.
with a H+H DT6F line spooled on a Bronson Royal 370 reel.
The "Wet Side" of this DT has the front taper removed and front taper from an Intermediate line spliced on.
(I reverse the line to fish dries, which is just the stock H+H line, with no mods...)
This is *exactly* the sort of fishing that makes me glad to own a 7'0" 6wt. rod.
The overhanging tree cover and bank vegetation is imposing,
and fighting rainbow trout in fast current requires something substantial,
at least for me, anyway. Thus: "short and heavy" fits the bill very well here.
Actually, this little rod is such a sweet caster, you don't even feel like it's lined heavy.
I was alighting a #14 dry fly on the water just fine with this 6wt.
Does anyone else here fish "down and back" in a similar manner?
Just curious...
