6x, 3wt, poppers, windknots, and an anchor

Despite what Hal says, I'm a trout guy...OK, I've been craving salty waters and those manly fish lately...but in my car always rigged and ready is my 3wt with a long 6x leader...so, today, when I got the chance with the hour or two left in the day to sneak off to the local pond and pitch poppers across the 80 degree water, I did it with the 3wt. A thunderstorm had just rolled through and the sky was clear and the water glassy with a heavy layer of fog a few feet thick over the whole lake. Not much action, not even the little slurps of bluegills that is usually so regular you can paddle by it, but there were some fish out there. Mostly, it was just a great evening to be out, alone, on the lake...

I thought about casting to them...

It's getting that desperate here...

It was wet today, threatening thunderstorms, with high muddy water. I went out twice - once at lunch to the bridge where too many people dump too much stuff, looking for bones and smallies, and later to the little creek where I can usually reliably find at least a trout or two. Under the bridge was pretty hopeless, though as I was standing shin deep along the bank two huge carp mucking in the muck appeared out of the brown waters, nearly ran into me, then kept moving along. But the junk here and there in the water annoyed me enough that I only lasted about a half hour. My regular little creek was somewhat better. Rain was coming down and the storm was picking up so, so was the water volume, but it still looked fishable. I tried a medium sized stimulator (in spite of the rain there were a few bugs in the air) but quickly regressed to swinging wollybuggers and muddler minnows. Caught a little small mouth and these other silver things that come out when it's too warm - never bothered to learn what they were. They were pathetically small, thus the cows...nothing else to report...just wetness.

Starting them off...

Her face says it all. I always thought the way I felt about warm-fresh-water game fish was a trout man's arrogance. I've tried to instill water-temp neutrality in my daughters, tried to teach them that so long as you're fly casting, it doesn't matter to what...no matter what they smell they leave on your fingers after you release them...I always thought it was nurture that bred a trout-bias...perhaps, instead, one's born with it...

Memories

Not a current picture, but wanted to add it to the mix here...since it was this fish - my first striper - that first got me addicted to the pull of big fish on a big rod...and that then lead to all this nonsense in between trips to the coast...

Back to the Bonefish

No one really wants to read another trout blog. And the sea salt-seasoned antics of a bunch of rookies wrestling 'wind knots' and hitting themselves in the backs of their heads with four pound bait fish patterns traveling mach II is funny once. But this blog is special because it's about the confounding Berkshire Bonefish. Ubiquitous yet oddly elusive. Bottom-feeding garbage disposals that are also fickle and picky. Golden versions of their more esteemed silver cousins of lower latitude oceanic flats...

Got out again today. Snuck off at 'lunch' to wade around the PCB-laced silt flats by the Bridge Street bridge. I've never seen anyone else on this water - not sure if that means I'm privy to some sort of secret spot, or ignorant of some more profound reason to stay away. But so far I've not broken out into a rash or anything at least...and, more than once, walking past coming to or from the Co-op, I've witnessed some decent Berkshire Bonefish nose down/vent up in the mud...just waiting for someone like me to tie in...had to try...

I first scout from the bridge. I next pitch a piece of dog food I stole from Lulu, my wannabe bird dog, into the water as a sort of offering then wade out in my cotton shorts to a gravel bar in the middle. From the bridge above I'd seen a carp holding and occasionally feeding under some trees on the far bank. There was a much larger one in an easier spot yesterday, but at least i see one and at least it's feeding. Casting a big 8wt (my new 'carp rod' I'd bartered for with some photos—thanks, Tom) in a smaller river lined with the typical overgrown northeastern banks was hard. A few wrestling matches with the leaves later and I'd started getting the fly more or less in position. But at this point and from this angle I had no idea if the fish was still there. In faith, I kept casting, then the line went tight. I wondered if I'd finally done it...Wasn't pulling as hard as I'd expected these suckers to pull, but it was a good tug and it was a smaller one I'd seen. Then it jumped and my heart sank back to normal. Just a bass. The largest small mouth I'd ever caught, perhaps, and even fun enough on my 8wt, but still just a bass. Landed him and a few more (the ones I couldn't simply shake off my atomic hellgrammite pattern, including another good sized one)...but no carp. After a while, I walked back up and across the bridge. Saw another swim into position, went back down, but lost it again by the time I was wet again. Sighting and keeping track of these buggers seems to be one of the things I still need to sort out. But not today. Broke down the rod, walked back, shorts wet and not drying in the July heat and humidity

Little Fish

While awake, I dreamt I was in Montana today...I was alone, in the evening, wetwading, fishing dries to wild trout...using one of two size 18 purple haze dries I still have from my last trip there...I can still remember the shop we got them in...a beat up hole in the wall on the way to the Big Hole. Caught a grayling - my first - on one of these flies there on that river. This evening I snuck up to crystal clear, cold, trouty looking water, way around the runs and holes, in the bushes, slowly behind a large fallen tree...cast up with one false cast, over the log into a nice drift along the deeper run on the opposite side of the creek. A few drifts later and a missed strike or two and then I had a fish on. Here's where I wake up...in spite of the 00wt rod and 8x tippet, the fish is still painfully small. 8" maybe. Indeed, the second one I caught was, literally, the smallest trout I have ever caught. A beautiful, healthy, wild brook trout, but...

What else could I do?

Went fishing today, twice, for trout. Had the 00wt again. Saw some carp in a pool where yesterday I saw trout. Caught nothing, but threw a rock at a one carp. Missed, of course.

Bugs

So I write this because the experience made me think of those classic traditional fly fishing images...Driving home tonight along the parkway (that's what they call them out here), dodging deer (had a really close one tonight), I was watching the fireflies smacking into my windshield and wondering if and for how long they continued to glow on my bumper...thinking all the time how appropriate the surreal green glow of these bugs is to carp fishing here, as the mayflies and caddis on a Montana pick-up's license plate are to trout fishing in the west...

Like I needed a reminder...

...seems lately I'm not having any trouble remembering to go fishing. It's getting other things done that's getting harder. Today, with the kids and wife at a movie, I ran over for just an hour to one of the reliable, little, local creeks.

"Take a worm can."
"No, I don't want one. If they won't take a fly I'll just flick it around."

—Ernest Hemingway, from The Sun Also Rises

Across the 10' wide, knee-deep stream along the micro eddy fence on the other side, I saw a soft, understated rise. My first few casts had just been prospecting with a #18 copper john - there was nothing buzzing in the air but mosquitos - so I switched to a likewise small stimulator. Two casts later I landed a nice little 11" rainbow. Just down stream, a few minutes later, I saw a much larger trout rocket up through a stony, flat run after some little minnow or something, pin it against the bank, strike, then bolt back off down stream. This fish was easily twice as long as the water it was in was deep (making it a 16"+ fish), and it was aggressive. But I couldn't find it again, much less coax it back into its fury with one of my flicking (swinging, actually) old-school wet pattern flies.

Then I also saw a pretty good size Berkshire Bonefish rummaging in the one spot of muck in a pollen crusted backwater eddy formed by some rocks and a recent tree fall. I was on my ultralight 00wt...but still couldn't help casting a light brown woolly bugger to it...thinking it was probably likely I'd actually hook it (since I was on my ridiculously light tackle) gave me mixed feelings...the renewed possibility of actually finally pulling off this silly mission and the legend-making story if I did it on the 00, while also trying to remember how much backing was on my dinky little, plastic pawl drag Sage 3100 reel tugged at my judgment as the bugger drifted into postion...I thought better of it...pulled the woolly bugger in, retied the stimulator, and cast a few more times for unseen trout in the riffles before heading home...

Don't need a reminder why I fish...

Craving for Salt

You know how when you eat a lot of salty foods you crave more salt?

The pursuit of the Berkshire Bonefish is more about the alleged size and power of these fish than all that other mumbo jumbo about beauty, stealth, and fickleness. It's nice, if it turns out to be true, that we can get all that here in our backyard, but trout have all that - sometimes we just need a good tugging at the other end of the line....so, meanwhile, and while I figure it all out, I'll continue heading for the ocean when I get that craving to see my 9wt doubled over and feel my arms tired from casting.

Spent the last week in Rhode Island on the south shore, working on my sun burn. A little late for prime striper season, but good enough none the less. For the first few days I got completely skunked. But on Wednesday luck arrived in the form of Erik (my saltwater coach and not strictly a fly guy, but knows his fish and what they taste like: "They're delicious. The smaller they are the yummier they are. Rolled in flower and sauteed in butter. Or baked with mustard and bread crumbs on top if they're bigger") and Hal (a previously low sodium sort who still says he understands why folks fish fresh water, but we'll see - he lost his virginity late Wednesday evening to a 20-something inch striper). I landed three fish in the salt ponds on Wednesday evening and another two the next morning (nothing even big enough to consider keeping, but all strong, salty fish, none the less), Hal, as mentioned got his first striper, and Erik broke off a healthy blue fish (don't feel bad for him, he's still fishing, a few miles down coast in CT and has caught up and passed our numbers already - and on the fly).

Erik with part of a bonito that a shark also thought was yummy. Note the blood on the side of his boat, chumming the waters.

Hal getting the 9wt lap dance (in a 7' kayak) from his first striper.