Favorite Creek

The Trout Season has been open around here in one form or another for almost 9 whole months, and in all that time I hadn't gotten over to my favorite stream yet this year. I really did not want to have to go into the winter without doing so, so I took the day off of work yesterday and hit it. My plan was to hit my fave first, and then head to a nearby brook trout stream in the afternoon. I wasn't sure what to expect since we have gotten quite a bit of rain in the past couple of weeks, but I was cautiously optimistic that the water would be in good shape. When I got to the first stream it was obvious that it had been up and out of its banks recently, but now just had a slight tinge of color in it. In other words, perfect!

My favorite stream...

Action shot!

There are not many reliable insect hatches on this stream, so I figured I would be fishing subsurface all day. The night before I had tied up a bunch of my Mushroom & Swiss Buggers and devised a new caddis pupae thingy with a CDC hackle. I love adding CDC to my nymphs, as I have written about before both here and in Fly Tyer magazine, but I had never done a caddis nymph with CDC. I was excited to see what the trouts thought of it.

CDC Caddis thingy...

A nice brown on the new caddis pupa thingy

I started the day with my new caddis imitation, and it didn't take long to see that the fish really, really liked it. I caught about a dozen in the first 45 minutes, all browns ranging in size from 6-12". After that first hour the water started to rise and get a little dirtier. The fishing turned off for a while.

A beautiful, brand new Mushroom & Swiss Bugger, ready to get chewed to bits.

This fish kept swimming up on the wet bank after I tried to release him. He should have followed the arrow, but he's a fish...

An old guy strolled by and watched me catch this modestly sized brown, then he insisted on taking my photo. At least I look good...

I was just about to call it quits and head over to the other creek to fish for brookies when I decided to switch to the Mushroom & Swiss. Right off the bat I hooked a nice brown, and then another and another and another. And a dark and fat brook trout. All the fish seemed to be in a hurry to fatten up. Maybe they were getting ready for winter or the spawning season or they hadn't eaten much when the water had been high and muddy, or maybe they have trouble pushing themselves away from the buffet, like me... Whatever the case, the fishing was so good I never did make it over to the brook trout stream. I am not much of a fish counter, which is good because that means there is no way for you to contradict my claims, but I would say I caught upwards of 60 trout throughout the day. All browns with the exception of the one brook trout and 2 chubs. And all of my Mushroom & Swiss Buggers were either lost or got completely chewed up.  I guess it's time to tie up some more!

Last fish of the day.

My last Mushroom & Swiss Bugger at the end of the day... It was a good run!

Gear Used: Unstructured Glass 804-4 fiberglass rod, Lamson LP-1.5 Lite reel, unnamed green biot-bodied CDC-hackled bead-head nymph size 12, and Mushroom & Swiss Buggers size 8.