Creek Addict

After work yesterday I decided to fish the river behind my house with one goal in mind: land some fish. As some of you readers know, I’ve been having trouble bringing the fish to the net as of late and just couldn’t figure out my problem. Turns out, I’m just a boner.

The first problem I thought I might be having was strike detection. As I worked my long leader set up through the drifts I concentrated on my strike indicator. It wasn’t long before I saw the tell tale signs of the bouncing backing I use as a strike indicator and I flipped my wrist. Fish on, fish off. So, I though to myself, ‘Damn you, you boner. What’s your problem? Why are you losing fish?’ I shit you not, after asking myself that question about 10 times, I hear my dad’s voice in my head. “You ain’t setting the hook good enough.” (I used to lose fish from bad hook sets as a kid, apparently.) You know what Dad, you’re probably right. So after a couple more drifts I see a fish tug on my line again -BAM – I hit it with a low, hard, long swing down stream and brought the fish to net! A few drifts later, I brought another fish to net. Problem solved.

Wait, what?! You weren’t setting the hook!? You ARE a boner!

Let me explain. I have been short lining for the past couple of months. Short lining is using heavy anchor flies with a dropper and fishing basically right out in front of you. The line is tight through the drift and you have total contact with the flies and the fish. For a hook set, all you need to do is flip your wrist, and that’s it. Herein lies the problem. I have recently been practicing long line nymphing, which is nymphing up to 30 feet away from you, holding the rod high, and watching your inline sight indicator do something unnatural. When fishing in this manner, you don’t have the direct contact with your flies, and are relying more on sight than feel. When you see the indicator move, you need to move the rod to get a proper hook set since there is more “slack” in the line. The line gets a big C curve in it as you move your flies through the drift. So a small wrist flip gives only enough force to straighten the line out, but not enough to force a hook deep into the fish’s lips. So uh, yeah, thanks Dad.

This will give you an idea of what I mean by slack in the line, and how I’ve been fishing. Notice the look on my face from losing fish, and the sweet hair, from being awesome.

Frustration: that pretty much sums up the whole of last week and this weekend. Frustrated because I couldn’t go fishing? No. Frustrated because the weather isn’t cooperating? No. Frustrated because the spring fisherman are filling my spots? Eh, No. I’m frustrated because I’ve been losing fish like it’s my fucking job. I swear, the number of fish that I’ve lost in the last week exceeds all this fish lost in the last 6 months combined. Saturday alone I lost over 20 fish. Yeah, I landed a few. My ratio was something like 2 out of 10. 2 OUT OF 10! It’s messing with my life outside of fishing. I can’t fall asleep, all I can think about is what I might be doing wrong. I’m grumpy. I can’t think about anything else really. I think I might have a problem.

Anyway…… Let’s talk about this weekend.

I attended a euro-nymphing class held by the Trout Predator himself, Aaron Jasper from TPO in the Ken Lockwood Gorge. The class was great, the weather was great, and the Gorge was fishing nicely. Made a few new friends, and got some tips on how to better the fishing style that I’ve been using these last couple of months. It was good to hear Aaron tell me that I was doing everything right. If you’re interested in the european methods of nymphing, take this class; you wont be sorry.

Even though I’ve been losing fish left and right, (I hate this generic played out saying, but I’ll say it anyway.) at least I’m out there fishing. It’s better than being at work, right?
Ugly little NJ stocker. Feisty fish though, for a little guy.

Sucker lover. No matter where I go, I always manage to catch at least one of these guys. (I caught two.)

Nice holdover brown. He was holding in a school of stocked brookies.

But I will……

Hooked three fish last night on my river. Had all three just about to the net, a few head shakes, and they were gone. Heartbreaking to say the least. Were they big fish? No. Did I have to work hard for them? Not really. Did it ruin my night? Hell yeah it did, bub.

Maybe it was the tiny hooks I was using. Maybe I had some bad hook sets. Maybe I’m a boner and held my rod too high. In any case, that was all I could think about all night long. In the end, what do three fish really matter in the whole scheme of things. Probably not much. When I net the next fish, it will just be that much sweeter.

I want to know how big that shark must have been to nom nom a marlin that size in half.

Thought I’d take a break from the tying for a second and show you guys what I’ve got cookin.
Scuderi ISO nymphs. The guys over at TPO put up a great instructional video on these. Basically trout crack.

Small midge type nymphs and some emergers. The clouds of midges coming off my river right now are unreal.

Got up late and decided to fish for a few hours. Took a few fish on tiny thread midges and red brassies. It’s great when you can drive less than 5 minutes and catch some trout.

This is one of the larger stockers, they are all pretty small. Next month, they should be stocking some bigger fish.