Sunday evening had all the appearances of being a slam-dunk for fishing, with ideal weather conditions: warm and still. In May and June, nights like that will find mayflies gathering over streams in mating swarms. After they've mated and laid their eggs, they fall to the water and the trout gorge. This is known as a "spinner fall." Driving out there, I felt viscerally tense with anticipation of the first good spinner night of the year. Not that I ignored the apple and dogwood blossoms on roadside trees, as lush now as they're likely to get.
All that nervous energy seemed justified at my first sight of Cloud Creek. Peering over the bridge at my favorite access point, I could see a commotion in the water. Not a rising trout, but two sizeable fish apparently chasing each other. I wasn't sure what they were. Carp spawn about now and make a lot of ruckus doing it, but the few glimpses I got of them told me they were not carp. Too bright, and I could swear I saw spots. Probably a couple of wizened holdover browns. With their adrenaline hiked, they likely would pounce on any thing that drifted their way. I cast a small olive wooly bugger streamer where it could drift into the fray, animating it with what I thought was a tantalizing twitch. Nothing. The submarine duel continued, neither fish concerning itself with the intrusion. After a couple of drifts, the quarrel subsided--maybe my line had spooked them. I sat under the bridge watching the now-still water, until a large swirl appeard about twenty feet downstream. That was definitely a feeding trout. I tied on a dry fly and let it drift down the main current seam. On the third drift, the fish took it...and let it go. Not even a moment of tension on the line. Subsequent drifts got no response. Stocker fish that hardly ever see dry flies aren't supposed to be that selective, or so I thought.
Soon I heard a splash behind me and turned to see the ring of a rising trout under the bridge. I fired a cast just above the fish and immediately got a take...and another rejection. It looked like a smaller fish, I thought. Maybe it couldn't get the rather large fly I had on in its mouth. Tied on a smaller fly and tried again, but got no response. No matter, I told myself. I just got on the water and I've already hit two risers. I had never even seen fish feeding on the surface here before.
I worked my way down with various dry flies and got similar results for the rest of the night. Cast to a feeder, and get a short strike or none at all. Adding to the frustration was the fact that I wasn't sure what they were feeding on. There were several kinds of mayflies on the wing, but no large number of any. I could see a few black caddis, too, but my caddis patterns went ignored. As darkness fell, no spinner cloud gathered over the stream, so I was left to continue the entomological guessing game. I continued to lose. Went back to the car a little before ten pondering my first ever Cloud Creek skunking.
Like I said yesterday, these trout don't play by the rules. Stocked fish ought to eat nearly everything they see, but these guys were selective. On warm late spring nights, even sophisticated wild trout will often pounce on a large, juicy dry fly gliding into their zone, regardless of the lack of insect activity on the stream. When actively feeding, all but the most pressured trout will usually hit a fly more than once. But the Cloud Creek browns were doing things their way, not the way of Au Sable or Muskegon trout, and sure as hell not mine.
That's what I mean by fishing as an act of penetrating some collective wisdom. Fish in various waters have their quirks about hitting or not hitting in different situations, and it can take a while to discover that the quirk exists. Figuring out how to respond to it may take an eyeblink, or a lifetime. At Cloud Creek the other night, the fish were feeding on something that they could see and I couldn't, in a manner that made sense to them. And they all appeared to be working on the same plan. It wasn't a plan forumlated by long experience in those waters (most of the fish there were probably in a hatchery tank a month ago). Whatever the situation was on the water that night had called it out of them. I was working by a different plan, drawn from fishing in similar conditions elsewhere. And I was shut out of the action.
I've since had a few ideas about how I might "crack the code." Hopefully I'll get back soon to test them out.
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In other news...grading, and hence my academic year, is officially DONE! I'll be hitting the town in Ypsilanti, MI to celebrate with friends tonight...
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