I am geographically challenged when it comes to home water. There is a paucity of quality trout water in the immediate Pittsburgh area. I visit my home stream often, but by necessity, mostly in my head. When I close my eyes I can see it and hear it – it is Spring Creek in Pennsylvania. I have caught my share in its water, though I do not claim any expertise and there are many that know her moods better. Spring Creek is the first stream upon which I cast a fly – and so shall remain my home water.

I started catching fish consistently on Spring Creek when I discovered the magic of the cressbug and black ants (fished wet). Those two flies seemed change the course of my fishing there and became my standard Spring Creek flies – excepting of course sulphur time.

On Spring Creek the water can seem barren at times – and then a hatch brings fish from the depths, and the water is suddenly alive with fish. It can be very humbling to see all those fish materialize out of a pool that earlier had left you empty handed. It is generally not the kind of stream that you can walk along blind casting dries and expect too much (at least I never have done well that way). So I came to Spring Creek on this trip with my handful generic, non-imitative, unweighted wetflies, which I fish without added weight – with a bit of trepidation. Was it unfounded?

Well the first section that we fished was unproductive. It looked nice and we saw fish as we hiked in. There was a shady bank with nice runs up under overhanging trees – very fishy looking. Started fishing and then…kayaks and canoes started floating by every five minutes and that was a bit discouraging. I don’t know if fish get used to these and learn to ignore them – but I found it hard to fish with any kind of focus in the face of this floating onslaught. So we moved on. We traveled 3 hrs to get to the stream – and so were not getting a terribly early start. So I filed this stretch away for future exploration earlier in the day (or maybe late in the evening) to avoid the plastic hatch.

No Kayaks and canoes on this stretch – and I started catching fish right away. I landed 4 and had several others on in a short stretch of pocket water. And I learned that even on a rich limestone stream, in the middle of a sunny day, fish can be caught pretty handily on a fairly large, non-imitative sakasa kebari fished without weight. A few years ago I would have had my doubts but now I know…

this is the fly that caught most of the fish…Japanese size 8 Keiryu hook (about a size 10 western fly hook)..peacock body, hen pheasant reversed hackle, orange silk loop eye

However…just before dark we went up to another stretch of stream where I knew I’d see lots of fish eating small sulphurs (ephemerella dorothea). And it was a feeding frenzy. Just as it got dark the water was boiling with fish – fish were rising everywhere. And none of them wanted my sakasa kebari. This did not surprise me at all. Well – I figured maybe a couple would take the larger fly especially as it got dark – but no luck. During a super hatch fish get dialed in – this is not news.

If my fly had been smaller (it was at least 5 times the length of the tiny sulphurs) maybe I’d have coaxed a few, maybe some different technique could have done it – who knows…So in the midst of an instense hatch maybe large generic sakasa kebari are not the best choice (no real surprise). I’m pretty sure a size 18 or 20 sulphur emerger would have cleaned up though.

All in all a successful half day on the stream. Chalk another one up to tenkara one-fly. It works even on rich limestone streams…except when it doesn’t.

Some other postings from the one-fly season: Day 1 and 2, Day 3 and 4, Day 5, Day 9. Days 6-8 not posted yet

Stream 1:

Going back in time – I know it’s out of order…but I want to get it posted anyway. Some other postings from the one-fly season: Day 1 and 2, Day 3 and 4, Day 9. Days 6-8 not posted yet.

I could catch these fish all day. Each one is a gift. And not a gift from the stocking truck – the hatchery doesn’t grow ‘em like that.. Though not huge – they are stream appropriate fish. It is not a large stream – it doesn’t have many deep pools, and it is not that fertile. It even has some pH issues.  So when I catch a nicely proportioned fish – regardless of overall size I am pretty darn happy.

Tenkara – and fly fishing in general – can be pretty darn easy sometimes. You cast a fly and you catch a fish. I’ve said it before, on these small mountain streams sometimes the whole thing is STEALTH. The fish are there, the fish will move to a fly, the structure is easy to read. It all comes down to stealth.

Stealth is not all about crouching and walking slowly – though it is about that. It is also about casting accuracy and delicacy. Most of the small mountain streams that I fish are not super high gradient streams with roiling plunge pools and lots of fast white water. My are usually pretty gentle with small sections of pocket water, small runs, occasional deep pools and long shallow pools with a small plunge at the head.

The small pools, pockets and runs with broken surface water are fairly easy to sneak up on.  The long skinny pools present the greatest challenge.  If you are experienced you will know that those brook trout like to hang at the tail of the pools, and actually all through these pools. The water is slow – but still moving and they can just hang and eat from the drifting buffet without much effort. This presents the challenge – any disturbance of that smooth water usually sends fish scattering.  Cast with caution! Here is when the light tenkara line really shines. Sure a long leader on a western rig can do the trick – bit often the fishing may be too tight to make that practical. That is not a problem with the tenkara though – especially when using level lines or light furled lines. But it has to be a light furled line that can float – and that lands on the water like a feather.  For my preferences some furled lines are way too heavy to do the trick.

So cast into the tail of the pool before getting too close.  I used to always try and spot a fish and then cast above the fish and drift the fly down stream to it. However, this is often unsuccessful for me because the fish is spooked. What I’ve started doing lately is to cast behind the fish (if I see one) – or blind cast up into the tail of the pool. The trout will sometimes (not always) turn and come back to the fly when they sense the disturbance on the water. And since you keep all the line (and yourself) downstream of the fish you have a better chance of not spooking it. Of course it doesn’t always work – but it’s worth a try.

Stream 2:

So I headed to another stream in the afternoon. It was similar – but something was different. I wasn’t catching much at first. I knew the fish were there – mostly wild brookies but some stocker browns and apparently some wild browns too. I was casting to the seams and soft water in the pools and pockets…nothing. I couldn’t figure it.

I had to listen to the stream – and to do that I had to mix it up. I was fishing lazy, casting to the easy to access spots – tails of pools, big pockets. soft water below plunges… I had to get serious. I started casting everywhere. And I found the fish. They were hanging tight to the big rocks, up under the rocks it seemed. Why? Who knows. Maybe somebody had been through earlier. All I know is that on the first stream that morning  the fish were pretty much holding out in the open – and these fish were hiding – go figure. It often pays to mix it up when you’re not catching fish.

And how do you know when it’s time to call it a day? When you don’t feel like sorting this out.