Time continues to be heavily pressured, and I’m better at using what little is left over to tie flies and go fishing than I am about writing up the trips. The past three weeks saw two trips with James, one an overnighter, and one solo trip, and they each had some interesting stuff.
First, James and I went directly from elementary school to camp at Backbone State Park on a Friday. We got set up, then went down to Richmond Springs for the last hour before darkness. True to form, everyone else had stopped fishing by then, so all we had to put up with was teenagers driving around squealing their tires and such. The stream felt a little battered from the usual hordes, but it was lovely in golden twilight. James set up in the pool just below the springs and I went back to the one just downstream where we caught our first ever Iowa fish. In the brief time we had, we each landed a rainbow.
We were both using #12 black woolly buggers.
The next morning we broke camp and headed to Bear Creek. As now seems standard for the Fall, there was a car already there. This time, we didn’t see anyone down on the stream, though. We had our best day of trout fishing, numerically at least, so far. We worked up the normal stocking stretch, doing pretty okay but not anything unusual. When we got to the huge upstream stocking pool I wanted to cross it and show James some of the newly discovered upstream pools. When we navigated around the big rock to get to the shallow crossing point, I froze. Couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a constellation of trout, holding everywhere at different depths. Dozens of trout. We slowly waded across without seeming to spook any, and set up shop on the far bank. We stayed there most of the rest of the day, until the action slacked off. Then we went upstream for a while, just to the first really good cliff pool. We came back in late afternoon and had another round at the big pool. James tied his personal best with six rainbow. All told, we caught 35 trout. My totals for the day were 25 rainbow, 4 brook trout, 13 creek chub, 5 rock bass, 5 smallmouth bass, and 3 shiners. James had a piano recital the next day and we were keen to get home at a decent time so he could get his daily practice in and also have a bath. So we couldn’t stay until dusk, though we were both yearning to. We bailed around 4.30, with the trout action still intense.
I didn’t make it back out for nearly two weeks, when I returned to Bear solo for just half a day. There was a van in the lot. I beelined for the big pool, and of course the other angler had already set up shop there. He was an older guy, and I was pleased to see he was fly fishing. “This is amazing!” he shouted to me. Yes…I know. I’m sure he was really about as pleased to see me as I was him, but he was very nice about it. I gently crossed over and we talked for a while. To his immense credit, he actually offered to let me have the spot, but of course I declined with thanks. He was retired, lived in Cedar Rapids (just a few miles from my house) and it sounded like he’d set out on pretty much the same course as I had this year, seeking out and trying the same streams. He was using a Harrison western five weight rod and similar combinations of buggers and nymphs as me. I left him to it and decided to spend most of my time upstream. I ended up walking much further than I had before, and there were excellent pools all the way. However, the creek chub really took over. If you like chub, it was amazing – they’re only supposed to get up to 12″ and I was catching multiple 11+” specimens. They basically seemed to be taking on the roles trout would if they’d been there in the nice holding water. There were also trout as far as I went, but they were sparse, at most one that I noticed in any good pool. Probably the most interesting thing on this trip was that the peacock herl nymph really revealed itself as a killer. I rigged James’s rod for nymphing and used the Rhodo for streamers, setting it aside and extending James’s Fine Mode at the deep pools. The peacock herl nymph was just hauling fish out left and right, all species. The other really interesting thing was I finally got a large specimen of one of the rare mystery fish and I’m pretty sure positively identified it:
I only had about six hours, and fished mostly a black woolly bugger on the Rhodo and a peacock herl nymph on the Nissin Fine Mode.
Finally, another camping trip got cancelled when I got some sort of stomach bug on a Friday. Instead, we went out to Bear Creek on the Sunday. There was an SUV in the lot and a truckful of family with little kids showed up as we were gearing up. We beelined for the big pool and found ourselves alone, so set up shop again. It was showing some attrition, but it was still pretty good. James caught two rainbows while I was still rigging my Rhodo. On the second, I’d gotten sorted out and when he hooked up I cast my bugger into the pool and set the rod down to go help him net and release it. I did that, then turned around to see my rod several feet from the bank, waterskiing away. One mad dash into the pool later, it became clear there was something heavy on the other end. It turned out to be a 12″ smallmouth, tied for the largest I’ve caught with one from a couple of weeks earlier. The beast must have taken the woolly bugger off the bottom.
The family with kids staged a very audible advance up the valley but turned around when they saw us (we really wouldn’t have minded if they’d wanted to join us.) We fished there until the action died off then went upstream. Upstream, for the first time, was dead. I think I caught one chub, and that was it. Not sure what that was about, slightly worrisome, hopefully just the time of day and other vague variables. When we went back down, intending to spend a bit more time at the big pool then bail (school night, and bath night), we found a father and adult son duo setting up with western fly rods on the far bank. We crossed over and talked to them for a while. They were pleasant enough, but the neatly bearded dad soon took to mansplaining to us about fly fishing. We couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t catch a single fish the entire time we watched, but we tried to politely nod along. Then he asked if I was from Iowa City. Not sure where that came from. Then he asked if I worked at the university. Then they both started into how much time professors put in at teaching and the like. I answered all the questions, but at this point I had them pretty firmly connected to the SUV up top with the Ben Carson for president bumper stickers. So I wished them well and we waddled off. Dad had told us that it wasn’t worth bothering with the upstream stocking pools because they’d been through them and hadn’t seen anything. Uh huh. So we decided to work our way through them and call it a day, and ended up catching three more rainbows each.
For me, the big squeeee on the trip was that I’d continued to work my way through Morgan Lyle’s book with success. When I’d stopped heaving with the stomach bug the day before, the only thing I was good for was tying flies. I tied 6 olive woolly buggers, 6 black woolly buggers, refreshed the peacock herl nymphs, then tied up six #12 and six #14 hare and coppers along with six #12 and two #14 Walt’s Worms. So I had two brand new patterns to try out (I actually had singles of the Improved Montana Stone and the Stewart Stone, but forgot about them). We set up at our favourite pool in the woods and I caught rainbows on both (size 12 of the hare and copper, and size 14 Walt’s Worm). So, somehow, I’m batting a thousand with the book. Every new pattern I’ve tied (brassie, peacock herl nymph, hare and copper, Walt’s Worm) has caught trout on the first trip. The hare and copper got a lot of action and had the feel of a killer. The Walt’s Worm got less interest, but it’s a very small sample size. It’s basically a killer bug with antron/hare’s mask dubbing instead of yarn. I think it might be better suited to moving water (as, in my opinion, the conventional killer bugs seem to be).
For James, the big thing was going for his personal trout record, which was six, achieved twice. I saw somewhere recently a complaint that focusing on numbers was boastful, or something. To each his own. We keep score because it’s fun and we fish to have fun (it might have something to do with my day job, in which counting up individuals of species in samples is a regular activity). It’s also pretty useful over time as it lets a kind of big picture emerge. Anyway, James had caught four rainbow at the huge pool, another in the shallows above our favourite pool, and another in the pool itself. He used a #12 olive woolly bugger all day. There were 7-8 rainbow holding in the upstream pool with the difficult tree overhang that we’d bypassed on the way down. We went back up there to see if he could get his record fish. He cast up from the tail of the pool. It took a while, he lost a fly to the trees, then he lost a fish at the edge of the net, but eventually he landed number seven. You want to have seen the eight year old fist pumping. My own totals on the day were 10 rainbows, one brookie, the smallmouth, and a creek chub.
