Maxwell with Marvin

My brother Marvin and I decided to go fishing on Saturday. He had never fly fished and I was interested in taking him to a productive stream. The closest one to his home is Maxwell Creek. Although it is a very short stretch of water, it is quite close to Lake Ontario.

Maxwell was stocked last year with 5 inch fingerling rainbows. http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/23219.html . Normally I'll fish Maxwell in the winter when steelhead and browns come in to spawn. I was not sure how the summer months would fare with this well used creek.

We arrived soon after sun up and the water at the lower section was very still. A few slow breezes brought up the chill of the morning.

Not a good hatch of anything was happening.

So Marv and I practiced a few basic casting techniques. 

We moved upstream to try some faster water.  Marvin was using a hare's ear nymph with a little twist of gold on it. We were trying some pool action when I suggested reeling up the line and heading up stream once more. As his leader passed by my feet and into 3 inches of water it started splashing.

I yelled, "you got one!"

"There it is your first fish on a fly rod and it's a rainbow trout." My excitement was more than enough for the both of us. 

I don't think Marvin was impressed. It was a tad under 5 inches. None the less Marvin had not missed out on trout fishing of New York State. We took pictures and I explained the markings to him. We carefully released the salmonoid to fight another day.

More about markings on the National Wildlife Federation website…

http://www.nwf.org/wildlife/wildlife-library/amphibians-reptiles-and-fish/rainbow-trout-or-steelhead.aspx

Marvin was having great success hooking sunfish...

After de-barbing the hook, Marv caught a second one about the same size. We then moved upstream to a larger hole where Marvin learned to roll cast. This produced for him two small perch. We continued upstream to the major water fall, where we spent the remainder of the morning catching fingerlings, sunfish, small mouth bass and rock bass. 

Released until the season opens this coming Saturday.

Meanwhile I hooked this nice 12 inch small mouth on a black stone fly nymph.

We were ready to go home when

we found another nice spot to fish.

I said to Marvin, "Just one more cast and then we'll go", which of course led to another hour of fine panfish retrieval. We both worked the water as I tried to help Marvin with the "mending line" technique. He finally got it. 

I showed him how the float stays in the swirling pool as the fly line flips back into the current.

While we watched, the float pulled hard under the water.

"You got one!"  I shouted. "Pick Up… Pick up!" 

To my surprise Marvin reeled in a really large Rock Bass.

This was the completion of our day, knowing we were leaving more large fish in the fast moving water of Maxwell Creek.

June 8th was the day my luck turned for the better. A well planned trip found me headed early Sunday morning to East Koy creek.

This inland stream promises both wild and stocked brown trout and an occasional brook trout.

It empties into the Wiscoy which in turn empties into the Genesee River somewhere near Filmore, NY.

This was my second time fishing this stream. The first time, with no success, was more of a drive-by test run.

That Sunday morning was sunny and warm when I arrived around 6:00. My garb fashioned sunglasses, vest, a wide brim hat, an olive Columbia short sleeve, slacks with rubber bands at the ankles to keep the spiders out. I put on some wading shoes and headed down stream. My heart raced with excitement as I followed along a barbed wire fence line on the bank above the clear early lit water. The blue of the sky sparkled in the glare that hid the possible fish catch I was passing by. Once the fence path ended, I entered the stream. It was frigid, as a trout stream should be mid June. The water was moving fast down hill for a good long ways. I tired many casts to the pockets behind boulders, but the depth was shallow and I could see nothing moving. Each cast took me further into the woods surrounding the creek. At one point I felt lost, as if I had been transported to the Adirondacks. There is a pine grove that lines the East Koy. Fly fishing all the while I looked, expecting to see black bear markings.

Then the sun broke through the tall pines and shined on the creek that had leveled out into a flat. I waited before I moved up on it.

I stood still, scanning the water, looking for a hatch or for a fish rising. No large hatches, one or two mayflies, then…. there it was, one fish nipped the top water just below the film. 

To this fish, I must admit, there was nothing interesting about a rusty old beat up fly. Wasted much time fishing the top water... would take off my dry fly and position a bead head and then another nymph until my thinking was the fish had moved out or was never there to begin with. So I made my way further downstream to come upon a nice, cloudy water hole. 

I tied on a yellow stone fly and drifted it in the 3 foot pocket. And withdrew my first fish of the day. 

12  inch stocked brown released

The next few photos are a bit foggy because while taking pictures of this fish,

I dropped my phone into the East Koy.

There might have been another trout in that hole, and I tried for a while, but my concentration was lost, concerned about my cell. It was stuck on camera and the touch screen was not working. It would not return to the main screen but I could still shoot photos with the manual button. The lens fogged over.

I then moved on down steam where I came across an uprooted tree. I removed the yellow stone fly, not wanting to lose it in the strange hole. I tied on a black bead head to skirt the hanging roots.

A couple of casts drew this 12 inch brown out from under the stump.

Tough to photograph when you can't see the display

Then another smaller trout about 8 inches bit hard on the tippet, jumped about 2 feet out of the water, twisted like a world cup soccer player and broke the fly clean off. 

I must have walked a mile or so and it was getting toward noon when I decided to return to my truck. On the way back upstream, I spotted a hole I had passed up thinking it was too shallow. I looked closer and noticed the creek cut under the bank quite a ways. Using a larger yellow stone fly, I cast into the riffle which pulled my float toward the bank. On the retrieve I saw a flash. My heart skipped a beat and quickly tossed another cast into the same run. Bam! this one was no 12 inch. He fought long and hard with a short run of my reel. I knew from previous experience this was no usual brown. He turned out to be a wild fish,

no damage, clean and no clipped fins. His adipose fin was about 1.25 inches long.

It had a shiny blue spot on the gill plate on both sides. Measured to 18.5 inches.

bright blue gill markings

clean undamaged fins

My day had a great finish and I value the time spent in God's creation. Each day is a blessing when you can relax behind a fly rod. Unless you work in a sporting goods store. Have fun and go fishing.... again!

Oh yes, I put my cell in a bag of rice for two days. My sim card was filled with about 30 blank photos. It's working now, just fine.

2014 in review

   Wow, It's been a whole year since I documented anything of importance.  Looking back to 2013, I realized it was my worst fishing and blogging year thus far. Keeping an account of what fish I caught is important because it helps develop schedule for where and when I fish. So In the months of January and February I try to fish the tributaries of Lake Ontario that are not frozen solid. This past January 2014, I only fished once and landed an 20 inch steelhead. February through March I may have managed to fish a couple of times. It wasn't until April that I really got back into fly fishing the inland trout streams. I thought I'd concentrate on Naples creek but the steelhead were slow to arrive this year and only saw a few taken that first week. Fishing three days straight gave me a sense of how much I lost the knack of drifting eggs. I heard rumors of more fish being caught when I was not able to go, but that's typical of fishing reports.

   The first week of May finds me in the spillways of the barge canal. I change my fishing tactics for the influx of spawning Walleye and Pike which come in with the filling of the canal.

I leave my fly rod in the truck (which by the way was purchased in January) and sport the spinning rod and plugs. No luck again for me. Kim went with me (bless her heart) and she caught a small mouth bass and a few white perch and rock bass. A good day of fun.

   June is here and started with a the idea of boating for walleye. As it turned out my boat is still not registered and I went wading in Scottsville to fish for walleye. Much too late in the season. Ended up getting a few mosquito bites. My friend Denny went with me and caught a brown trout. Later that day I returned to the water. Only this time in Canandaigua Lake to try out some new Linsey rigging with minnows. I waded from shore and hooked up with yellow perch, large sunfish and rock bass.

So now you're thinking, is this really the type of fishing I want to read about? No.... It's only a recap of what my past year has been like. In the next two blogs about June 2014, I will tell the story of how I caught an 18.5 inch wild brown trout in the East Koy creek. And another tale of guiding my older brother Marvin to his first hit of rainbow trout on the fly.

More to follow....