Life on Trout

Life magazine recently uploaded its storied history of photographs into Google’s image database. There are some amazing shots, although if you search for “trout” the years before catch-and-release was the norm are well- documented and a bit disturbing.

Still, there are some beautiful and interesting shots. Here are a few examples:

Suckers Abound

Based on news reports and a personal dispatch from a fly-toting friend, Opening Day in New York wasn’t the best of days. The fishing report board from Catskills Flies lists stream conditions as “quite high,” “too dangerous to wade,” and “far too high to wade.” The Delaware, which is the “dangerous” report, is listed at 13K CFS. Yikes.

Here are a few excerpts from newspapers, including a report of anglers taking more suckers than trout:

• Fly fishermen Jessie Tyrrell, of Genoa, and Jason Gawarecki, of Weedsport, were having little luck Tuesday after starting the day at Salmon Creek (which was “real high and muddy”) and arriving at Hemlock Creek in Locke before 11 a.m. Both were using artificial flies.

• “People were catching fish, almost all of them those recently stocked trout.”

• Suckers abound 

• Put-and-take success 

• “Most disappointing, he said, was the discovery a few miles upstream of a half-dozen recently stocked trout that been swept into a streamside meadow by rising creek waters and had apparently perished when the waters receded. “

I read through some of those stories and felt a twinge of jealousy for about a split-second; that is until I remember that Opening Day is state of mind and my season opened at around 12:01 a.m. Jan. 1.

First Tracks

I know some people see great significance in the first fish of the year. To me, it’s more of an “It’s about time” moment, no matter how early that first one comes to the net. I’m usually a nervous, self-guessing wreck until something takes a whack at my fly, no matter what time of year it may be.

Here are my first two fish of the year. A rainbow, which came during an annual winter freeze trip in January. And a Guinness can-sized largemouth, that I brought to the bank on Saturday afternoon.

The trout hit a Copper John drifted as a dropper under a #14 Parachute Adams during a light snow. My hands were pretty well frozen and I remember being hungry. The trout looked a little skinny, as many winter trout do.

The bass pounced on a minnow imitation in about four feet of water in a pond near my home. The weather was still too cold, the water looked stark and lifeless, and I was just thinking about calling it a day after about an hour when the fish smacked my fly halfway into the retrieve. Another one, slightly larger, followed. I decided that was a good way to end the afternoon. Another week and the season officially begins.

There’s a steelhead jaunt scheduled for early May and I hope to make a few small-stream stops before then. April draws crowds to the streams in New York and New Jersey, so it’s tough to get properly motivated.