So the third consecutive day of record high eastern Iowa temperatures saw 69 F forecast. Sounded like an invitation to me, so I got 2017 angling started with a solo day at my beloved STSNBN. Everything about it felt strange – fishing with nothing but a t shirt and fleece on Feb. 19th. Like, it was fun, but 2014 was the hottest year on record for the world, then 2015 was hotter, and then 2016 was hotter still, and it puts a damper on t shirt weather in February, the whole “We’ve torched the planet” thing. But it didn’t stop me from fishing.
I finally got around to tying some Slump Busters. Well, two Slump Busters. I followed the steps in John Barr’s “Barr Flies” except that I added a lead wire underbody because I like to fish streamers heavily weighted. I had intended to use a Daiichi 1720 hook, but the cone wouldn’t go on over the bend, so I used a 2220 4X streamer hook instead. I tied it size 12, with an extra small tungsten cone head (sadly, according to J. Stockard, Wapsi has discontinued the extra small size), and used precut zonkered pine squirrel strips. It’s an easy fly to tie, with getting used to threading stuff through the fur without binding it down the only trick.
I managed to get on the road at 6.30 am. When I got to the parking lot, it was pretty much a skating rink. After I got geared up, the first challenge was getting to the stream. Although it was headed for nearly 70, it had been below freezing the night before and the slope was frozen with a layer of clear surface ice. And I was wearing wading boots with felt soles. There were leaves mixed in, but they had ice right beneath them. I set off confidently, slipped near the top, assumed the slip would arrest at some point, it didn’t, and my legs shot out from under me and I went down on my back. Hard. ‘Kay. I pulled a muscle in the middle of my back, was the only damage. But the only safe way down was to crawl on my hindquarters, and it wasn’t that safe.
The stream had a lot of water in it, but it was fairly clear. I’ve turned my nose up at it previously when it’s been in this state. But I didn’t feel like touring other places today – on an unseasonably hot Sunday I was pretty sure more accessible places would have people (and I got to STSNBN early to try to beat anyone out – possibly a good idea, as the parking lot ice revealed someone else arrived after me, turned around, and left). So I geared up and had a go at the first pool. Initially I had James’s Nissin Fine Mode Kosansui 320 with the Slump Buster on it and my Suntech GM Suikei Keiryu Special 39 with a Frenchie and Bead Head Hotspot Killer Bug in tandem. The nymphs didn’t get a sniff. The Slump Buster got only a couple of desultory follows from chub. I’ve never persevered at STSNBN when I can’t catch anything at the first pool, but my mind was made up. I was just going to enjoy being there, and I was going to march all the way down and back up regardless of what the fishing was like. I made a second decision – I christened the brand new pattern I was packing a “lack of confidence fly” and given that it didn’t look like I was going to catch much of anything anyway, I resolved to fish nothing but the Slump Buster all day. I swapped it onto the GM 39 and packed the Kosansui away.
STSNBN is my favourite stream in Iowa, and part of what makes it so is that it just doesn’t take any prisoners. It will keep you happy with hordes of cyprinids (when the water is warmer, anyway) – I’ve caught over 200 in a day. But we’ve fished it pretty hard for two years, and it doesn’t yield up its trout easily. We can pretty much clean up wherever we go these days, stockers by the dozens, wild protected browns, high mountain lakes, whatever. But we’ve never caught more than three trout in a day at STSNBN. It’s part of its charm. It’s miserly.
There’s that, and there’s the behemoths that dwell in it. Last spring I had the biggest trout I’ve ever had on a line nearly to the net. It broke the fluoro 6X tippet. And I’m probably still not over it. It was followed by two more huge hookups on later trips, neither of which I landed. I caught a 15″ specimen. But there are genuine monsters in the stream. That was in the back of my mind today, too.
Anyway, it was looking like mainly a wet walk in the snowy woods, but at the first good downstream pool I caught a big chub.
Aside from that, a good stretch of the upstream water passed with no more fish. I didn’t care. I was on the board, and given the circumstances I was basically playing with house money. The big pool yielded nothing. At corner pool downstream from it, the pool was almost shockingly reconfigured with the big gravel bar we’ve sat on for two years washed away. I plunked the Slump Buster into the fast head of the pool and a little brown trout nailed it.
Well. Day officially a success. After that, though, small browns kept hitting the Slump Buster, often in fairly shallow, fast, runs, and I kept catching them.
Pretty soon I’d tied the oft-achieved but never beaten total of three, and I was still well upstream. Suddenly a nothing day was becoming a something day.
And just like that I’d caught four brown trout in a day at STSNBN. And it kept going.
I’d caught five before I’d even gotten to the really “trouty” section of the stream. But when I got there, hoo boy.
Once I got to “slow pool,” the start of the the typically trout-rich (by the standards of STSNBN) portion, it was already a banner day. I caught a sixth in the head of this pool. To this point, all of the trout had been small, 8-10″. That, uh, was about to change. I moved to the middle portion of the pool, where you can stand on a couple of silted in dolostone boulders on one side and cast directly across to a beautiful deep lie with an overhanging submerged boulder for shelter. I’ve caught several largish trout, including a bizarre brook trout turning up in 2015, from this spot. I cast straight across, let the Slump Buster sink on a dead drift at the edge of the overhang. Did one twitch and the rod went electric. I knew exactly what was on the line, because it’s now happened a number of times. Big ‘un. Big, big big ‘un. The hook set felt fairly firm, but I couldn’t move the fish at all after the set. Then he(/she) started to move on his(/her) own. It was kind of surreal. The line made that sort of sizzling sound as it was zipped back and forth through the water, taut and shedding droplets and mist as the critter rose and dove. These things ended badly so many times last year that I almost dread them. But last year the problem in all three cases was I had 6X fluorocarbon tippet on. This time it was 5X mono. It got tested a couple of times early and both times I managed to turn the fish. I was also in a good position with the GM 39, cocked and absorbing a lot of the fish’s strength instead of hopelessly extended. Still, it was the longest fight since I resumed fly fishing in 2015. Which made sense, because it was the biggest fish (landed). Eventually it settled down and allowed itself to be guided in and netted. I quickly slapped the tape measure on him.
17.5″ If you think the “.5″ is petty, don’t care. 17.5”. I likely caught something even larger in my youth in Canada – I caught some huge Dolly Vardens. But by far the largest trout I’ve landed since resuming fishing.
In some ways, though, it only drove home the sting of last year. This was a big fish, but the one that haunted my dreams last year was far bigger. Now that I know what 17.5″ looks and feels like, the monster last year was almost certainly more than 20″. Oh well, got a whole spring to reengage.
So a sweet day was now officially one of the Best Days Ever.
I could see it coming a mile away, but on a special day, “trout pool,” named for obvious reasons, came up blank. But I caught a few more all the way down to bottom pool, where I got one in the auxiliary head.
I was done pretty early, just after 2.30 pm. I turned around and slogged back, stopping again at all the good pools. This provided the only real frustration on a massive day: I hooked into four trout and had follows from three more, but landed none of them. This was very strange, because I lost almost nothing on the way down. My best guess is that the one remaining Slump Buster (the first lasted through five trout before ending up in a tree) had lost its point. It was snagged on rocks at least a couple of times. It’s going in a labelled ziplock in any case – one of my first Slump Busters tied, caught the biggest fish since resuming fishing in Iowa.
Was it the Slump Buster? Luck? Something else? Unanswerable. But we’ve fished this stream front, back, and sideways for two years, and I just caught more than triple the previous best total of browns. Slump Buster definitely just went to the front of the line for tying efforts this year.