I thought about going fishing this morning. I thought about it for a good while. I was lazy. Too lazy to drive somewhere and hike back into a real trout stream. That would be a lot of work. I thought about it while eating a good lazy breakfast.
I thought more about it after breakfast, sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee reading a couple more chapters of John Gierach. Sometimes, reading about other people fishing is as good or better than doing it yourself. Especially when it’s Gierach. This guy has more interesting fishing trips than me, and catches more and bigger fish, anyway. And even if he didn’t, he could still make it sound a sight more interesting.
He does real fishing. He fishes in real trout streams, the ones out west. The ones that people hop on airplanes or drive for two days and nights to get to. The streams that are filled with real fish. You know, big, fat rainbows, cutthroats, and browns that always seem to be 18”-20” long or more. Real fish in real places, where there are real hatches-millions of bugs coming off on regular, cataloged schedules, where you have to use specific flies matching the hatch to catch the fish. If the fish aren’t rising to a hatch, they apparently don’t fish out there. Real fishing involves seeing a fish rising, then casting to it, and catching it. When fish aren’t rising, they drink beer, tie flies, write books, think deep thoughts, and stuff.
That doesn’t happen here much. I probably don’t see twenty fish a year rising. There aren’t many hatches. Our fish here are redneck fish. They eat about anything that comes floating down the creek if they’re hungry, from mayflies to spring lizards and globs of nightcrawlers and niblet corn. Our real trout streams are back in the woods, beautiful small crystal-clear creeks. And our real fish are little. Adult native specks probably average 5” long in most of the water where they live. A 9” speck is a huge one. Wild rainbows? Average 5”-8” in most creeks, anything around 11”-12” is a very nice fish indeed. Browns get bigger, but you don’t catch many of the big ones, except in certain places under certain conditions.
Then, there are the other creeks, not the real ones. They run through cow pastures and trailer parks. The water is not crystal clear. The banks are lined with stuff like Chinese bamboo and multiflora rose bushes and riprap. There may be junk cars and mysterious pipes in the creek. But there are fish there in most of them. Some of these creeks are stocked, some aren’t. And the really sad thing? The trout in these silted-up, unattractive creeks are bigger than the ones in the beautiful, pristine, clear, real creeks back in the woods. Usually much bigger.
I finally decided to go out this morning and fish one of those creeks for awhile.
When I finally headed out from home, it was about too late to go out for good fishing. The fog was starting to lift quickly, but there were still a couple rabbits alongside the road.
My destination was a creek about three miles from home. One of the creeks that I cut my trout-fishing teeth on. I’ve probably fished it more than any other creek over the last forty-some years. I’ve fished there enough that I can about call the locations of the strikes, and guess pretty accurately what species of trout it will be. I know about every stretch of water on the creek well from its headwaters to the point many miles downstream where it dumps into the river. Minor changes occur every year due to floods, construction, and whatnot, but I am still catching fish here in a lot of the same little tucked-away spots that I did decades ago.
This creek is stocked occasionally, but it also has a good population of wild and holdover fish, some of them big. I’ve caught more big trout over the years out of this creek than any other, including several browns over 20”. The fishing can rival some of those real streams out west if the fish are in the right mood, which they usually aren’t. They might have been for the first couple hours of daylight this morning, but I was too lazy to find out. Anyway, I wasn’t real fishing today. I have never seen a single fish rise on this creek in my life that I can remember. And if I ever do, I'll probably leave it alone, because I'll assume that it's touched in the head. Trout just don't come to the surface and delicately sip mayflies on those creeks. It's not becoming, or in the local culture. But I’ve caught probably tens of thousands of trout here over the many years I’ve fished it. And I knew I could usually catch at least a few fish here almost any time.
When I parked at a bridge and got out of my truck to look at the creek, the sun had already burned away the last of the fog. The creek was high, almost too high to fish well, but not quite. It was slightly off-color. I rigged up my 10’ 3 weight with a pair of heavily weighted nymphs-the point fly a big, dark, rubber-legged stonefly imitation, and the dropper a smaller nondescript fly of my own design that I refined to suit myself long ago from the favorite nymph pattern of the old man who got me started fly fishing and fly tying. I call it the Verlin Deluxe, and it has been one of my go-to flies since I was a teenager. It imitates nothing exactly, but everything passingly. It looks buggy, it’s yaller, and the fish eat it.
I waded about a quarter-mile downstream through unappealing ankle-to-calf deep riffles that I knew had some good water below them that isn’t fished much. As I waded, suckers and darters scattered in front of me, and a kingfisher followed me downstream, cackling and rattling continuously like a thing that has been wound up tightly and then released.
I thought more about it after breakfast, sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee reading a couple more chapters of John Gierach. Sometimes, reading about other people fishing is as good or better than doing it yourself. Especially when it’s Gierach. This guy has more interesting fishing trips than me, and catches more and bigger fish, anyway. And even if he didn’t, he could still make it sound a sight more interesting.
He does real fishing. He fishes in real trout streams, the ones out west. The ones that people hop on airplanes or drive for two days and nights to get to. The streams that are filled with real fish. You know, big, fat rainbows, cutthroats, and browns that always seem to be 18”-20” long or more. Real fish in real places, where there are real hatches-millions of bugs coming off on regular, cataloged schedules, where you have to use specific flies matching the hatch to catch the fish. If the fish aren’t rising to a hatch, they apparently don’t fish out there. Real fishing involves seeing a fish rising, then casting to it, and catching it. When fish aren’t rising, they drink beer, tie flies, write books, think deep thoughts, and stuff.
That doesn’t happen here much. I probably don’t see twenty fish a year rising. There aren’t many hatches. Our fish here are redneck fish. They eat about anything that comes floating down the creek if they’re hungry, from mayflies to spring lizards and globs of nightcrawlers and niblet corn. Our real trout streams are back in the woods, beautiful small crystal-clear creeks. And our real fish are little. Adult native specks probably average 5” long in most of the water where they live. A 9” speck is a huge one. Wild rainbows? Average 5”-8” in most creeks, anything around 11”-12” is a very nice fish indeed. Browns get bigger, but you don’t catch many of the big ones, except in certain places under certain conditions.
Then, there are the other creeks, not the real ones. They run through cow pastures and trailer parks. The water is not crystal clear. The banks are lined with stuff like Chinese bamboo and multiflora rose bushes and riprap. There may be junk cars and mysterious pipes in the creek. But there are fish there in most of them. Some of these creeks are stocked, some aren’t. And the really sad thing? The trout in these silted-up, unattractive creeks are bigger than the ones in the beautiful, pristine, clear, real creeks back in the woods. Usually much bigger.
I finally decided to go out this morning and fish one of those creeks for awhile.
…
When I finally headed out from home, it was about too late to go out for good fishing. The fog was starting to lift quickly, but there were still a couple rabbits alongside the road.
My destination was a creek about three miles from home. One of the creeks that I cut my trout-fishing teeth on. I’ve probably fished it more than any other creek over the last forty-some years. I’ve fished there enough that I can about call the locations of the strikes, and guess pretty accurately what species of trout it will be. I know about every stretch of water on the creek well from its headwaters to the point many miles downstream where it dumps into the river. Minor changes occur every year due to floods, construction, and whatnot, but I am still catching fish here in a lot of the same little tucked-away spots that I did decades ago.
This creek is stocked occasionally, but it also has a good population of wild and holdover fish, some of them big. I’ve caught more big trout over the years out of this creek than any other, including several browns over 20”. The fishing can rival some of those real streams out west if the fish are in the right mood, which they usually aren’t. They might have been for the first couple hours of daylight this morning, but I was too lazy to find out. Anyway, I wasn’t real fishing today. I have never seen a single fish rise on this creek in my life that I can remember. And if I ever do, I'll probably leave it alone, because I'll assume that it's touched in the head. Trout just don't come to the surface and delicately sip mayflies on those creeks. It's not becoming, or in the local culture. But I’ve caught probably tens of thousands of trout here over the many years I’ve fished it. And I knew I could usually catch at least a few fish here almost any time.
When I parked at a bridge and got out of my truck to look at the creek, the sun had already burned away the last of the fog. The creek was high, almost too high to fish well, but not quite. It was slightly off-color. I rigged up my 10’ 3 weight with a pair of heavily weighted nymphs-the point fly a big, dark, rubber-legged stonefly imitation, and the dropper a smaller nondescript fly of my own design that I refined to suit myself long ago from the favorite nymph pattern of the old man who got me started fly fishing and fly tying. I call it the Verlin Deluxe, and it has been one of my go-to flies since I was a teenager. It imitates nothing exactly, but everything passingly. It looks buggy, it’s yaller, and the fish eat it.
I waded about a quarter-mile downstream through unappealing ankle-to-calf deep riffles that I knew had some good water below them that isn’t fished much. As I waded, suckers and darters scattered in front of me, and a kingfisher followed me downstream, cackling and rattling continuously like a thing that has been wound up tightly and then released.