Saturday, June 2, 2007

Back In The Saddle Again!

Well it’s been a good 20 “some odd” years now since I’ve done any Trout fishing… err… come to think of it… any significant freshwater fishing whatsoever so I thought I might start a journal chronicling my foray back to the dry fly.

When I was a kid I spent endless hours skipping up, down and through the rivers and streams of northeastern New Jersey mostly hooking up Bass and Crappies (yes that’s a fish for you non-anglers not a “floater”) with the occasional outing west for Trout along the Raritan and Pequest rivers.

A few times I even managed to get out to the incredible Willowemoc in Roscoe New York for a helping of what “Trout Town USA” had to offer as well as making trips to the Battenkill in Vermont with my parents and to the Sierras, Yosimite and surrounding areas in California with my uncle and cousin.

I even went so far as to get deeply involved in the “black art” of tying flies but I should admit that this was mostly done as a means of cutting down on the costs of my poor backcasts.

Well, then things changed a bit.

First there was school, and then work, marriage, kids… the next thing I knew I was closing in on 40 and hadn’t seen the likes of the wily Trout for decades save for possibly the smoked buffet style sort.

Of course, I did practice some other forms of fishing during my respite from the Trout such as occasional bouts with “Striper Madness” and a crack at the Blues from time to time.

I shellfished during the summers regularly with my family on the Cape, and I even took up recreational Lobstering for a short time when I lived in Plymouth which eventually set me off on a long, still unresolved, period whereby I set myself to the task of concocting a technologically superior Lobster trap, but that’s a story for another day.

The point is, there was a discreet moment in time when me and the Trout cleanly parted ways with nay a hookup or even the mere sight of a rise for almost two decades.

Then it occurred to me, last Wednesday, like a clear strike of lightning ripping through an otherwise overcrowded and overtaxed mind.

“Sabe!!… Me workkee alone!” I grunted to myself, “Me boss now… If Me go away, half day, here e there to stream, no one notice… Me thinkee… Sabe!!”

Before you know it I had my old “cheapo” Cortland 7.5 foot rod re-rigged with some nice new 5 weight floating Orvis Trout line and a heap of dope from the local fly shop proprietor on where to go the next day I had free.

It wasn’t long after that, Friday as a matter of fact, that I made my way out to the nearest reputable Trout water, a stretch of the Millers River that runs from Orange to Erving Massachusetts and beyond.

When I arrived at Orange, I quickly decided, given my current state of inexperience, to choose an easy access point and not to get to experimental in wading long distances up stream.

The last thing I needed was to overestimate my fortitude against the current, slip and float unconscious through the old burnt out textile towns of western Massachusetts only to eventually become fodder for some beaver paradise.

Instead, I stuck to a single, simple and slow stretch of water behind the Orange Waste Water Treatment Facility situated along route 2A just outside of town.

At first, this didn’t sound like such an attractive site to kick off my heroic comeback but one quickly discovers, after entering the grounds just outside the facility, that the river is clean and well cared for just as had been noted at the local Trout Unlimited chapter website.

Friday was initially pretty warm and sunny and there were very few fish rising to the surface, maybe one or two rises, but seeing as I had lots to work to do merely reacquainting myself with casting, presentation, de-snagging and the like, I decided to wade a bit into the river and use a dry fly.

I started with a March Brown, worked on my casting a bit, and then, having no luck, moved on to a dark Caddis pattern partly for the color as well as simply for its buoyancy.

Sticking with the caddis I moved up and down the stretch of water, hitting what I had suspected as “hot spots”, under a train bridge that crossed the river, at the tail end and midsection of a nice smaller pool towards the head of the stretch, and back down into the broader flatter area where I had started out originally.

Well after some time I had managed to stabilize my cast and gained some sense of comfort with walking the river but still no hits.

I began to wish that I had brought some wet flies as well as how great it would be if I learned how to nymph as I suspected that there was probably plenty of activity going on below the surface.

It had always been apparent to me that an overhead midday sun was a great deterrent to surface feeding and this day seemed to support that notion.

Also, there was a tremendous amount of what I can only describe as “fluffiness” floating into the stream from, I’m assuming, the trees or some local plant or bush that had me wondering how these fish ever get a square meal without incurring a constant penalty of cotton mouth.

Trout are cleaver but dammed if I know how they are able to discern between a spent light colored mayfly, White Wulff, or one of these cottony puffies.

Eventually, I decided that the Caddis wasn’t working for me and remembered that at the fly shop, there was a sign posted indicating that the Wooly Bugger was currently a hot item on this river.

I skipped it initially as, to me; it just doesn’t look like any insect I know of.
Maybe it looks like the abdomen of some really dark and fuzzy dragonfly or a caterpillar that took a wrong step or, I guess, many wrong steps.

It’s just kind of unnatural plus all I had was a real fat #12.

I should also mention that I did not know at the time that the Wooly Bugger is technically a wet fly.

I tied it on and fished it like an oversized dry. My false casts were erratic… It was as if I had tied on a large wet Cheeto.

Well, I presented it about as well as I could and it landed with a large ugly plop which, to me honest surprise, was almost immediately answered by a strong and resounding hit!

Bam!

Luckily I wasn’t so shocked as to forget to set the hook which I immediately did and then, feeling that he was likely a smallish 8 – 10 inches, settled in for a mostly leisurely retrieval.

I’ve never been one to simply jerk the fish out of the water as I have always thought, possibly wrongly so, that if I could run their energy down a bit, it would make it a lot easier for both me and the Trout when it came time to remove the hook.

I’m a “catch and release” type angler so I try very hard to return the fish as unharmed as can possibly be for a creature that has just been skewered through the lip and yanked from its homeland.

That said, I was letting the Trout run a bit, noting that it had a surprising amount of strength given its size, while slowly drawing it closer.

At about two to three feet from where I was standing and after getting a quick glance of it’s back and tail fin, but not long enough to determine rainbow from brown, he hopped off.

Poor me. :( Oh well. No biggie. ;)

At least I had him for a moment and anyway, what was I to expect from my first hookup in decades.

Next time, Ill just have to remember not to be so demure when setting the hook.

I have to say it felt really nice to have a Trout on and to know that I still had most of the basic fishing skills intact.

After that hookup I de-fouled the Bugger tried for a while longer but it was getting to be late afternoon and I still had a long ride back to Boston.

I left knowing that, although I hadn’t quite succeeded in completely landing a Trout, I was well on my way toward rekindling my love of fly fishing and would return soon with some new ideas and even greater optimism.

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