Shaking Off the Dust on Cayuta Creek

Cayuta Creek has become an old friend. With the coming of each early spring I find myself drawn to her. Part of that attraction is her beauty. Sweet and petite, her waters bring out the best of early spring, before wildflowers and green leaves fill the woods around her banks.

Cayuta Creek’s beauty shines even before the forests come alive…

And part of that attraction is her ability to help me shake off the dust and lose the rust after a winter spent indoors. Her trout, some stocked, some holdover, and some wild, are always there waiting and often times willing.

Early season fly fishing on Cayuta is largely a stonefly game – little black stones – though traditional nymph patterns and streamers can also work well. Some years, like last year, the unusual early season weather brought caddis and mayflies in abundance leading to some very good dry fly fishing.

I usually fish Cayuta Creek at least once before the opener with fly angling friend Dan, profiled here before. We’ll meet up at a pull-off, rig up with nymphs or wet flies, and fish down or up – more or less walking the length of the special regs section above the Wyncoop Creek Road bridge – catching up, commiserating, celebrating the new season, and conjecturing on what the year might bring.

We met up the weekend before the opener and Cayuta Creek did not disappoint. It was Good Friday in more ways than one! I fished my standard early season pattern – the venerable picket pin – but this time it was one of my own. I fished it as the tail fly to a weighted prince nymph and to my delight, caught a feisty brown on my third cast.

First fish on one of my own flies…

Dan and I fished the lower stretch of the creek that day and found one particular section that was loaded with hatchery browns. We caught them dead drift and on the swing with our nymphs and wet flies. Sometimes they’d even jump a fly stripped in for another cast.

I fished Cayuta the next day, this time on my own, and I did nearly as well. The sun was out and later in the day little black stoneflies were hatching with abundance. They fell like heavy snow, on and off it seemed, and would float and skitter clumsily downstream. The trout did not ignore them, rising aggressively as they sailed down the creek. Unfortunately, I was ill-equipped. I did not have anything that matched those stoneflies, though a black caddis seemed to draw the trout up for a look. A picket pin fished weightless on the swing worked pretty well, though greasing one up to make it float would most likely have been better (again, ill-equipped – no floatant on hand!).

I returned to Cayuta Creek the Friday after Opening Day. I found a very different creek on that overcast and cold day. The water was up and had a dark green stain to it, no doubt the result of snow-melt and recent rains.

A brooding looking Cayuta Creek…

I fished a nymph with a picket pin tail fly and found little success and I wondered at one point if this disturbing finding on a section of the creek that allows artificial lure use only had anything to do with it…

What fly or lure angler would use a ‘Y’ stick…

Later I decided to switch up to a streamer – a picket pin streamer tied by Dave Pelachik of JJ’s Jigs. I fished it upstream dead drift, then stripped it on the swing. Wading downstream, I swung the weighted streamer through a deep run and felt a solid whack and then the head-shakes of a good trout – one bigger than the stockie fare. After a good tussle I landed a brown in excellent condition, heavy-bodied, silvery colored, and quite possibly a wild trout from what I could tell.

A nice Cayuta brown caught on a picket pin streamer…

I fished a little more, lost another decent trout and had a few more swipes from what seemed to be stockies. At one point, a nice older gentleman stopped by to check things out. He spoke to me from roadside, across the creek and I could tell from our conversation that he was an experienced fly angler. He was new to the area, having moved from Pennsylvania and thought he’d check out Cayuta Creek. I fed him with all sorts of good information on this favorite little creek. After a while of pleasant chat, he bade me good luck and told me he’d leave a glass bead midge larva pattern he’d recently had luck with on Kettle Creek. In a way I suppose, it was my ‘little gem’ thanking me for all the praise…

Say hello to Maddy…

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
― Will Rogers

Will Rogers said it best: dogs are good. They live their short lives on this earth looking up to whomever walks into their lives and this goes back to early man who was looking for a guardian, hunting companion, and beast of burden.

Dogs have come a long way, all in service to man…

Dogs don’t judge; they are the very essence of unconditional love. Come home from after a bad day, depressed, tired, even angry, and though they’ve been home all alone, they come to you, tail wagging, as if Jesus Christ had just come back to earth.
Long are the tales of a dog’s absolute devotion and loyalty. Hidesamuro Ueno brought his dog, an Akita named Hachiko, to Tokyo in 1924 and every day when he left for his teaching job, Hachiko would stand by the door and watch him go. The Akita would then arrive at the local train station at 4 p.m. to meet his owner when he returned from work. Ueno later died of a stroke at work, but Hachiko continued to return to the train station every single day for the next 10 years until his death in 1935. A bronze statue stands at Shibuya Station in honor of Hachiko.

Hachiko: loyal to the end…

Then there’s Hawkeye, the Labrador retriever, that showed dogs too suffer from heartbreak. During Navy SEAL John Tumilson’s funeral, Hawkeye was seen ambling up to his owner’s coffin and then dropping to the ground with a heaving sigh.

Hawkeye grieves for his fallen owner. No greater love…

Indeed, I remember my grandmother once saying she never trusted any person who didn’t like dogs…

Up until very recently, I’d been dog-less for too long. I grew up with dogs, after all, starting with Cocker Spaniels, thanks to my grandparents who bred and showed them. Blue Bay was their kennel – home to many champions of conformation and obedience. Years later my wife and I owned Basenjis, a unique hound breed out of Africa, known to many as the ‘barkless dog’. We showed Kephas (our male) and Yodie (our female), and after finishing them as AKC Champions, they had a litter of 5 puppies. The litter pick, Blue Bay’s Violet Memory, was named in honor of my grandmother and was my way of thanking her for bringing dogs into my life. ‘Violet’ produced many champions. One of her descendents was the first black and white Basenji to win the breed at Westminster.

Kephas and Yodie passed on, as all dogs do, and we took a break from dogs. It was nice at first not having to walk a dog in the pouring rain or frigid cold, shouting under one’s breath every expletive known to man in front of ‘just go…!’, and yes, the house seemed a lot cleaner, dirty laundry left undisturbed, cherry cheesecakes not yanked off tables, etc., etc., but after a few years without panting and yodeling and all those dog antics – comic and touching – well, something was missing. My wife stood fast for a while, claiming she wanted to enjoy the house ‘chew-free’, until out of the blue, she noticed this picture in the news…

Those eyes…

The rest, as they say, is history. A week after noticing this Lab / Hound mix, we all went to see her. The bond was immediate and magical. It wasn’t another week before she was brought to us, courtesy of Every Dog’s Dream, a pet shelter in Greene, NY. Maddy wagged into our lives and where my wife saw a good walking companion, I immediately dreamed of a fly fishing friend.

Maddy…

It turns out that Maddy was one of a litter of 5 puppies born somewhere in South Carolina. The litter had been left to a high risk shelter, where dogs are often put down. Fortunately, Maddy and her litter-mates were sent north. Audrey at Every Dog’s Dream referred to Maddy as an adorable, big hearted girl who had good manners and liked being close to her humans. Our adoption proved she was more than right.

While pure-bred dogs have their place in life and certainly serve a purpose, the sheer number of homeless dogs continues to sky-rocket. Many of these dogs are real gems, such as we have found in Maddy, and all they’re looking for is a chance to warm a heart.

My plans for Maddy include lots of love and play, obedience training, and ultimately, a seat beside me on the way to flowing waters.

I know the Lab part of her breeding will win her over to water and I’ll promise her this…

“Oh the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

Jack Perch and ‘The Greatest Generation’…

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died.
Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
George S. Patton, Jr.

Yellow perch are a blue collar species of fish, and I write that with praise. They show up for work in their green-barred overalls trimmed in bright yellow as if they’re ready to watch a Green Bay Packers game.

Jack perch – the kind of yellow perch Richard liked…

They are the quintessential working man’s fish species; reliable as a quartz clock, massing in large schools, and endearing bait and lure anglers alike for their willingness to strike nearly anything that happens to scoot by their snouts. What they lack in size they most certainly make up for with a feisty attitude on the hook, and even better, their ability to grace the plates of anglers looking for deliciously mild fish. In some northern locales they are regular menu fare. I enjoyed some of them myself this summer while fishing with a good high school friend in the Thousand Islands.

I’d tangled with yellow perch in my spin angling days, but I’d never heard of ‘jack perch’ until I met John, a coworker and good friend. John’s father, Richard, a life-long Buffalo resident, fished for them in the Niagara River. Turns out, the jack perch is a bigger badder yellow perch, meaning that Richard preferred his perch on the big side.

John and I worked together a number of years, then went our separate ways to the call of different jobs, different careers. As is often the case these days, one must leave home to keep employed, and that’s just what John did, leaving New York to continue employment in Florida. We have kept in touch to this day, and until recently, I’d always ask about his father, Richard, and his pursuit of jack perch.

As he got into his 90′s, Richard’s health declined. John would tell me how he didn’t fish any more, but he’d still park by the river and watch others fish. And then came emails reporting hospitalization – good days and bad days – and finally, Richard’s passing.

In the aftermath, John shared a picture of his dad with a stringer of perch. He looked the part – a true fisherman – not all ‘tweedy’ as they say in some fly fishing circles. Plain and simple as the fish he pursued.

But there was more I never knew about the man who loved jack perch. He learned the building trades as a young man and then in 1942, answered the call to war and enlisted in the Army Air Force. He joined what I believe to be a version of the Navy Seabees – a combat engineering and construction unit that built the airbases from which the United States waged war – the 818th Engineer Battalion (Aviation), or EAB.

John shared a copy of his father’s discharge papers, and quite frankly, I was blown away by what I read. Under a section entitled ‘Battles and Campaigns’, was listed; Ardennes, Central Europe, Normandy, Northern France, and Rhineland. For those not schooled in military history, his unit participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the campaigns to take back Northern France, the Battle of the Bulge (Hitler’s last attempt to break through the Allied assault in what was considered the impenetrable Ardennes Forest), and the final assault of Germany. Indeed, according to what I read on one website on the 818th EAB…

This battalion landed on Utah beach on June 30th, and followed advancing armies through France to Luxembourg and to the Nancy area, engaging in the construction of 18 airfields. In the “Bulge” area, the unit was forced to mine and guard their installations. Y-46 at Aachen was one of the first fields in Germany, and the 818th built 12 S and E strips east of the Rhine.

During 3 precious years of his youth, Richard no doubt grew up quickly. He fought in the most historic battles of World War II, participating in the great struggle to defeat a tyrant who nearly enslaved the world. In doing so he witnessed the absolute best and worst of mankind.  Then he was honorably discharged and returned to Buffalo where he married and raised a family, worked, went to church, watched Buffalo sports teams, and, … fished for jack perch. Richard was 95 years old when his heart finally gave out and another member of ‘The Greatest Generation’ left us for the final call. I know he is bank-side once again, watching a bobber float down flowing waters, surrounded by those who left this good earth before him.

Fly Fishing Goals and World’s Most Interesting Man…

My grandfather on my father’s side was a most interesting man, but not “most interesting” in the zany way a successful Dos Equis beer ad has been running recently…

My grandfather had less hair, but the skin tone is right on…

He wasn’t known for bowling overhand, sky-diving in a kayak, or shooing a pet mountain lion from his kitchen counter, but he was most interesting in his mannerisms and the way obscure factoids on his life would pop up in conversation. There are pictures of him, for example, on his “ersten tag” (first day) in Kindergarten – in Germany that is. Mind you, he lived in Staten Island, NY, the only child in a rather wealthy family. There are pictures of him in full Ivy League raccoon coat regalia, and pictures of him standing most majestically atop some hill in Mexico, his side arm prominently displayed (he apparently had spent time with a rich Uncle in Mexico at a silver mine back in the Pancho Villa days)….

Pancho Villa – one most interesting man crosses another…

…and pictures of him in front of his freshman alma mater, RPI. He was apparently kicked out of school for being more partial to parties and other such collegiate fun than his studies.

He was a quiet man, but his mind was anything but quiet. He was both curious and fascinated by absolutely everything and when I would visit with him in his golden years, he’d frequently remark, “explain to me Robert, how do they do that?…”

One of his great quotes, in response to anything that required his time and attention, was; “I’m studying it…” Though he was definitely in the running for patron saint of procrastination, the old man was very smart and a relentless student of life which kept his mind as sharp as a razor until his dying day at the age of 95.

As covered in a post last year, I decided to re-write my fly fishing goals. My intentions were good, and sadly, I can’t even use my grandfather’s procrastination veil as an excuse. I never did publish them last year, no less re-write them, as a matter of fact. So, as promised most recently, I’ll give it another go, here:

1) Catch a lake trout on the fly – lake run or from the lake.

2) Catch one of the following saltwater game-fish on the fly: a bluefish, striped bass, or weakfish.

3) Begin fly tying – focus on perfecting three patterns, with a goal to catch fish with these patterns.

4) Float fish the Susquehanna; Campville to Owego. There’s some good water back there.

5) Practice and improve my casting distance and accuracy.  Learn to single haul and double haul.

6) Fish with friends – enjoy their company and learn new skills and places to fish.

7) Learn to tie one new fishing knot.

8) Fish for steelhead. Did it once in 2012 – do it more in 2013.

9) Fish Handsome Brook. Fish it a full day, good and hard with a lunch break at Gilligan’s Island (best burgers and ice cream around!).

10) Night fish for trout. Always wanted to do this!

Life is short. A day not fished is a day never to be fished. If I can accomplish 6 to 7 of these goals, it will be a good year, indeed. Here’s to 2013, tight lines, bent rods, and plenty of head shakes…

 

Looking back on 2012

By most accounts, 2012 was a strange year for fly fishing in the Southern Tier of NY. Local anglers I’ve talked to didn’t know what to make of the wild seasonal swings, and fishing seemed to be mixed, at least according to my journal, with phenomenal days followed by not so good outings during other parts of the year.

Thanks to a warm spell in late winter / early spring, fly fishers enjoyed great fly fishing for trout. Instead of a bone-chilling opener, anglers basked in relative warmth and fished near gin-clear water conditions. Even the pre-opening fishing on waters that were open, like parts of Cayuta Creek, shown below, was excellent.

Some anglers reported early season dry fly fishing – as early as March 7th – which is unheard of in these parts. Note the water level and clarity of the West Branch of the Tioughnioga (below) in late April! I didn’t have my fly rod when I took this picture but brown trout were actively rising to caddis, leaving me drooling…

While the trout angling got even better in April, another surprise opportunity was the smallmouth bass fishing in local rivers and streams. Rivers were at low levels thanks to the lack of snowpack. Normally, bass fishing on the larger rivers is not possible until late spring at the very best. I kept eying the “big four” in our area – the Tioughnioga, Chenango, Chemung, and Susquehanna – and watching the USGS water gauge. Even the main branch of the Susquehanna looked enticingly fishable as shown in this picture taken in late April. As a reference, the point to the left in this picture would normally be covered by 6 feet of water at this time of the year…

After reading a post by fellow fly fishing blogger, Dave Pelachik, I decided to give the Susky a try and boy was I glad I did, as detailed in a post I did soon after my trip. My only regret is not spending that entire day on the river…

Fly fishing in general was outstanding on the Catskill Rivers. The tailwaters were able to maintain flows throughout the season: the freestone Willowemoc and Beaverkill were not quite so lucky. In any case, the only ‘off’ part of the spring was the effect the weather had on the hatches. They were in some cases very strong and early and in others, such as the March Brown hatch, reported to be non-existent. But the trout were hungry. One observation I noted in my fishing is that I did not see the same proportion of rainbows to browns that I normally do, but the browns were certainly in very good health.

While the smallmouth season started out with a bang for me, late summer fishing was for some reason a bust, at least on the Susquehanna where I fish it. It got downright befuddling at times, to the point where I began to hunt the smaller Tioughnioga and upper Chenango. Interestingly, these rivers fished better than the main branch of the Susky. Noticeably absent during much of my fishing on the Susquehanna were the younger year class bass, which normally prove to be a nuisance.  These fish were present on the smaller rivers but their absence in the bigger water is a mystery to me.

The West Branch of the Delaware continued to fish well into June…

While summer fishing was slow in some ways, the largemouth bass on the pond out back of our house were ever willing to slam anything tossed their way. And the white fly hatch in early August on the Susquehanna was epic, but didn’t seem to bring out the bass for me, at least.

Saltwater fishing was also a mix. I fly fished Meyer’s Hole near Barnegat Light, NJ on the July 4th holiday, and was fortunate to run into schools of very willing shad that clobbered my clouser streamer to the point where it was nothing more than a jig with no tail feathers. These mini tarpon were a blast, leaping on every hook-up. These were 1 to 3 lb fish, but mingling among them were houndfish, a gar-like fish that on two occasions attacked my clouser streamer and ripped line as they streaked across the surface of the water like an airborne torpedo. My houndfish were not quite the size of the monster shown below (but they were a good 3 feet in length), but these are respectable game fish, and keep your hands away from the business end!

The party boat fishing was also a mixed bag. I went with my cousin Mark over that same July 4th weekend and we caught ‘cocktail’ blues on jigs. We won the pool, believe it or not, with a blue just shy of 2 lbs. We split the winngins at $65 a piece. Go figure…

Later in the year in September I fly fished the bay again with nothing to show for it – then headed out on the Miss Barnegat Light for blues and did nicely, again using jigs. These were 6 to 14 lb fish – the kind that leave your arms sore and put a big smile on your face. Anglers drifting chunk bait in the slick did better than us jiggers. The fish seemed a tad picky – unusual for the ever-hungry bluefish.

Bass fishing in late summer seemed to pick up for me. On one morning I did very well fishing the tail of a pool in the Susquehanna. I had noticed the distinctive water disturbance left by bass chasing baitfish and positioned myself to swing a white Murray’s streamer across the tailout. These fish were very aggressive and were marauding the very shallow parts of the tailout. I landed 4 very nice bass and lost 2 more before the action slowed. One fought like a snag the first few seconds, then had his way in the strong current before I lost him.

The Finger Lakes trib runs never happened unfortunately. I was ready and willing, but the rain just never came strong enough to trigger staging fish to move up the creeks. Oddly, rain did hit the Catskills late one week in October and I knew it would be the perfect set-up for streamer fishing for pre-spawn browns with attitude. I hit the West Branch of the Delaware with the river settling but still nice and murky. The streamer fishing could not have been better. 8 browns, colored up, the males with kypes and besting 18″ came to hand, with as many or more electrifying short takes including one practically a rod’s length away from me.

Striper fishing in the fall was an absolute bust thanks to Hurricane Sandy. I took a trip Thanksgiving weekend with my son, Chris, and no one on the boat caught a fish. I also caught a skunk on the Salmon River in November. The salmon were done then, and steelhead were caught, but not by this angler. Sometimes a river demands its dues before it graces your net.

It was certainly an odd year for me, book-ended by absolutely bests (early smallmouth and fall browns) and filled with some days when an angler should have stayed home and got some things done. What’s most important though is the learning and the loving of the outdoors. One often forgets a day not fished is one less day fishing.

A new year…

It’s been an interesting year. Blogging here took a back seat to family, work, sometimes to fly fishing (a good thing) and also to writing for Examiner.com. I have two sites there, one devoted to local fly fishing – the other site more general in nature and not tied to fly fishing in the Southern Tier.

As we wade into 2013, I’ll devote this blog more to musings, observations, commentary, and stories – mostly true – though this author always reserves the right to some poetic license. So if you arrive here in search of fly fishing reports, gear reviews, factoids, or fishing and conservation news, please check out my Examiner sites. But by all means stop and stay a while first – I hope my words to be a little chicken soup for the fly fishing soul, and maybe some motivation…

Look for my next post to be a recap of 2012, a very strange year indeed in my fly fishing ventures, and a look forward to 2013. There I’ll commit to some goals, destined, no doubt to be broken in the coming year with perhaps at least a few ringing true at year’s end. I’ll close this brief post with the words of Rainer Maria Rilke, hoping in 2013, we can all fly fish ever deeply and widely:

“go to the limits of your longing…”

 

 

Standing where you should be fishing.

None other than smallmouth bass guru, Harry Murray, has echoed these words regarding the reaction many anglers have upon seeing stream or river; that being to head straight to fishy looking spots, spooking good fish in the process. The complete saying – that most anglers stand where they should be fishing and fish where they should be standing – is always hovering over me like some divine angling angel, waiting to alight on my shoulder when I am bank-side and way too exuberant to get in the water.

And so it was that an angling angel hovered above me as I fished a streamer down a river braid of the Tioughnioga River a few weeks ago. I was approaching the junction where the braid creek joined back with the river. The angel showed itself, not in some whisper above my shoulder, but in the form of a fish. As I approached the junction, my eyes were on a broad riffle that looked oh-so-fishy. What my gaze missed, was the seam, where the fast current of the main river pushed against the deeper slow water of the river braid. At the point of the junction was a downfall  – beyond the downfall, the river current had built up a long thin bar of sand, silt, and cobblestone. Looking downstream to the right of the seam, the water was pure riffle; to the left of the seam, the water deepened and slowed. Along the ridge of the seam, long aquatic grass swayed in the current. It was a perfect ambush site, an area of about 20 to 30 feet in length, 10 feet in width and 2 feet in depth. There’s no doubt baitfish would congregate in the aquatic grass. It’s also not a surprise that bass would find the broken water of the riffle as good cover from above and the adjacent still water as a great place to hunt when the time was right.

The current seam that I almost waded through, saved by my angling angel.

As I closed on the seam, my angling angel appeared in the form of a solitary bass blitzing baitfish, sending them leaping for their lives. The blitz ended as quickly as it started, but awakened me to the fact that I was about to violate one of Harry’s cardinal rules had I continued wading right through the seam. I stopped and cast upstream towards the downfall, then stripped my “Murray’s Wounded Minnow” streamer through the seam. On my second such retrieve, my line pulled tight and got nice and heavy. In the current I could see the golden-brown broad-side flash of a large smallmouth as it tried to head to the safety of the riffle water. The fight ended in a long-distance release, but I was pleased to start the morning off with a good fish on the hook.

Thinking this was an isolated case, I violated a second rule – to never leave fish – and waded carefully upriver and then worked a streamer down and across the riffle. As good as that water looked, I picked up plump and feisty bass, several fallfish, and in the deeper pool beyond, a small walleye, but no more quality fish like the one I had encountered at the current seam.

Eventually I crossed the river and slowly worked back upstream to the seam. I was ready to head back to my car when I saw another blitz in the same spot. I quickly moved into position and cast my streamer. I was soon tight to another quality bass, but lost this one too after a brief brawl. Could there be more? I answered that question after a few casts and this time, tied into an even larger bass, dark in color, that shook its head in the current and then proceeded to skip across the water like a flying fish on takeoff. We tussled back and forth, but soon this bass was mine. I lipped the bass and felt the solid bite-down that only truly large bass give when first brought to hand. This fish had weight and wildness in it…

On the way back to the car I stopped at a deep hole in the river braid. As I waded the shallow side of this elbow pool, I spooked what I thought might be two bass. I let the spot rest a bit and carefully walked the bank back to where I had seen the fish. Sure enough, two very nice bass swam in small circles in the shallows, but I quickly recognized these fish were on the nest. I let them alone and headed back to the car. I’d be back in time, hopefully with my angling angel in tow.