Last Sunday, that old saw about just waiting five minutes if you didn't like the weather was pretty near the truth. I also got to rethinking my usual anxieties about weather and fishing. Sunday's weather was anything but ideal for early season fishing, but the fishing was good anyway.
In the morning, I passed on the daybreak streamer mission and slept in till 7:30. After a leisurely breakfast, I broke camp, then got on the Au Sable mainstream just below my campground around 10:00 AM, throwing streamers into the brush and into what pockets of shadow remained as the sun moved high into a clear sky. I landed a couple of fair sized brown trout by 11:30 and waded back to the landing for lunch. By then, that clear sky had become cloudy, and as I fired up my stove to heat some chili, snow was falling. Soon it was falling hard, but it ended by the time my chili was hot, and I ate in sunshine.
After I'd packed up, I thought seriously about calling it a weekend and heading home. The weather forecast called for snow and rain in the afternoon. I'd already caught some fish that morning. I could go shiver in a cold current trying to catch a few more, or I could get home in time to help my wife make a nice dinner that we could eat at our leisure with a nice bottle of wine.
Well, I had seen hendricksons hatch in worse weather than this.
I drove to the south branch of the Au Sable to risk hypothermia on the chance they'd hatch today.
Got on the river at a place I call the 99 Access, a spot in the lovely but imperiled Mason Tract. Skies were sunny as I tied on a streamer and began working my way downstream. Clouds moved in, and began to spit snow. Then they belched it, mixing in rain perhaps out of sheer meanness. I'd left my raincoat in the car, so I headed for the bank and walked back up to get it. By the time I got there, the snow had changed to light rain. I retreated inside the car until it stopped. After I got out, the sun broke through the clouds one more time, and puddles of water began steaming on the roof of the car. Not trusting the break in the weather, I left the raincoat on when I went back into the river. The same cycle played out again and again that afternoon--sun, clouds, snow, rain, sun...
Eventually, I figured it was getting nearly time for hendricksons to show if they were going to, so I re-rigged to fish dry flies. I threw a hendrickson pattern near logs and took one nice brookie and one small but respectable brown; lost a few other fish. By 3:30, the hendricksons were thick on the water, and when I came to a bend that has fished well for me over the years, I saw some very large fish feeding agressively. Fish like these are the reason people come to the south branch.
Not that getting them is easy, at least not in this spot: when rising to flies, fish here tend to stick very close to the far bank of the river. Trees are thick along the near bank (i.e., the only bank that offers an approach), ruling out a long backcast. Brush hangs low over the water on the far side, waiting to tangle any cast you do get over there. That's why the fish there make it to the size they do.
With some awkward flicks and mends, I got a drift in the vicinity of one of those toads (fisher slang for a big trout) and he took. After a few hard runs downstream and bulldogging me for a couple minutes, just out of net range, he came in, 17 inches of gleaming, muscular brown trout. As he swum away, I saw another nice fishing coming up in an easier area to approach just downstream. The casting was easier, but I worked that fish for more than ten minutes before he took. Once he did, he bolted far downstream, leading me on a chase through a log-strewn stretch of river nearly waist high. Tripped a couple of times, catching my balance just in time to avoid a cold swim. Once netted, the fish measured out at 19 inches.
As I waded back upstream, replaying that catch in my mind, I noticed that the mayflies were gone. My honey hole was quiet. And snow was falling once again. This time, I knew it was the right moment to make my exit.
No comments:
Post a Comment