Leave of absence

I know, I haven't posted in a really long time. Hopefully that will be changing shortly though. Nothing too exciting has gone on lately though so you're not missing much at least. Made a half dozen trips out for spring trout season so far. Caught a 25" palomino on the first day and picked up a 20"+ walleye fishing the outflow on a local reservoir a few weeks ago. I will try to get some pictures posted up of them if I get a moment. Not sure how well my phone will work with blogger though so we will see. Check back from time to time and you may find that I get back to posting my regular frequent trip reports. Until then, tight lines and happy fishing.

20 Mile

Hit 20 mile at daybreak. The water had pretty good flow and color to it. Lots of guys out considering it was a tuesday. Got a few fish very early on pink nuke eggs then missed one smaller one later in the day on the same. Also threw stoneflies and sucker spawn with little interest from the fish. When I drove back home at 12:30 there was 9 cars parked at 7 mile. I didn't even think there was that many places to fish it, maybe I will go down tomorrow and see what is going on. I can't even imagine enough fish in it for 9 cars worth of fishermen.

Lower Elk

Fished elk this morning starting at the legion parking lot and working my way upstream to the posted property. Picked up a couple fish early on small nuclear eggs. Walked back to the lot and then downstream for quite some distance. The water was extremely low and clear, ankle deep on most of the flat spots between slower holes. Pods of fish were present in a few places but with considerable distance between sightings at times especially upstream. If I were going back to elk tomorrow I think I would look further upstream or in the borough park but I think I will be staying on the mile streams in the morning tomorrow.

I also got to use my new tripod for the first time. Picked up a gorilla grip tripod from walmart. It has plastic bendable legs that seem well suited for getting wet or dirty from time to time while providing a quick rest for the varied terrain along the creeks. Gotta work on my aim a bit as you can see from the second picture though.

20 Mile

Fished 20 mile from daylight till about 11:30am. Saw lots of fish in the water but had more trouble than I would have expected getting them to hit. The water has a decent amount of flow and color to it now that it quit raining. I would say it is still on the high side but definitely fishable. Picked up fish on pink glo bugs and had hook ups on other pink patterns like sucker spawn and crystal meth. Saw a few fish going over the falls near the middle road access.

7 Mile Creek

I read a post on the fisherie.com reports page from a guy saying he had a lot of luck on 7 mile creek yesterday. So in the early afternoon I went for a walk down the creek since I live about 1/4 mile away. From the road to the mouth I only saw 1 steelhead and it was located in the small hole just up from the big hole at the mouth. The fish looked like it had been through some pretty rough times and had a pink fly sticking in its tail. I guess if you walk all the way to the mouth and only spot that fish, you pretty much have to swing some bait past it just incase. Now I am not saying the guy is a liar or anything because he did state that he picked up the big brown fishing the mouth but with the waves today I didn't bother throwing anything into the churning brown water.

On a better note, my new fly line came today. The stuff that came with my rod/reel combo was terrible and wouldn't even slide freely out the tip top eye of my rod. It was too stiff to bend going out without being cast.

Now if we can just get a bit of rain for me to test it out.

East side morning

Got to the stream around 5:45am. Apparently the west side had gotten a lot more rain than the east. Walnut's stream gauge showed almost 200 cfs which would probably have been great fishing if I had wanted to drive the 40 minutes to the west side. Only saw 4 other fishermen all day though which is more than I can say if I had gone to walnut. Got about 8 feet away from a beaver walking the stream in the dark this morning too. Thought it was a hellbender at first since there is really no sign of beavers around that area. The video quality is a bit bad, there was 30-40 fish in that hole alone and no other fisherman in sight.

At the Vise

Tied up a few supplemental flies tonight for the morning. The rain should make some cloudy water making it perfect egg pattern fishing conditions. Planning on getting to the stream well ahead of the crowds to get a premium fishing spot.

Not too bad for about an hours tying I suppose.