The Long Skinny Fishes

After my daughter had such great success with her fishing club a week ago, I had to give it a try myself on the same stretch of creek.

This little brook is 20 miles inland and feeds to the sound but where I was fishing it is completely isolated from the salt water fish by a series of mill dams (there is a program to add fish ladders but that hasn't happened yet). At this time of year, even in this rainy summer, it has very low flows. It feels completely different than it did in the spring when I was catching stocked trout out of it.

Very slow water, muddy bottom, lots of cover = perfect redfin pickerel habitat. Which is what she caught, and what I caught too. It only took me about 1/2 hour. I "saved" the good pool for last--I wanted to explore a bit. And after tying on the trusty elk hair cricket/hopper pattern, I took one long cast across the favoured pool. The fly landed gently, I let it sit. Then I gave it a couple twitches and from the bank came a wake--as if there was a submarine--when the wake met my fly I lifted the rod tip and had my quarry hooked!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7GObeJmCp8

That was Friday. Then on Sunday the 1st  I was driving back from my son's college after making an emergency violin bow delivery. I only had my 8.5 foot 5-weight in the car, but there is a tiny brook on the way back. Unlike the first, it does see anadromous fish. But so far in 3 attempts I have never caught anything there. This location is about 4 miles upstream from the tideway. The water in the creek was really really low, really clear, and really slow. Instead of starting on the brook, I walked right across it and got over to the pond that feeds it from the side. I figured there might be something -- a bass perhaps -- hiding along the bushes along the bank, so I made sneak casts around the corner from a nice open spot. This went on for about 10 minutes with no result.

So I changed tactics. From that same spot I simply roll cast out 90 degrees into the open--but near the outflow to the brook. There were a lot of lily pads and other water weeds along the bank out about 15 feet. I figured there might be somebody hiding in there.
Well, it worked! A couple casts into it, my fly landed gently at 40 feet away, and there was a flash, and a wake heading straight for my fly. As the wake met my fly, once again I lifted my rod tip and fish on! But this time it was a chain pickerel, not a redfin. And it was bigger. In fact it was quite a good fight. It was the same length as my rod handle plus just under an inch--this makes it just under a foot.

Unfortunately no pictures ---I left the camera in the car.

What is really satisfying about this past weekend is that it was the first time I've ever caught any of the long skinngy fishes. I've always been curious about them. And now I'm even more interested in catching more of them, including the fabled northern pike and the muskie.