Pine Knob Loop and a Slushy River

Well folks, we're still a long way off from bonafide fishing in these parts. Yesterday, we got hit with a pretty potent winter storm that dropped about 5 inches of snow. Then it changed over to sleet, then finally to rain, just to make it extra sloppy out there.

If you take a look at the river, it seems like a different beast. Hatches of caddis and Hendricksons seem like a distant daydream. But, sure enough it will come with time, if we can just make it through the cold nights for another couple of months.

I took a look at the Housatonic yesterday and it looked as if the weather gods had a snowball fight, all of them landing in the water.


Went on a hike with Nora. The hills overlooking the Housy are certainly beautiful, yet quiet this time of year. We didn't see any wildlife at all. Maybe they were hunkering down, trying to get through the storm. Or, perhaps the dogs gave them ample warning of our presence. We were the only ones on the trail and the dogs really loved playing in the snow. Doesn't seem to bother them at all, in fact they relish it.


Anyway, fishing season is not officially closed yet here in Connecticut. Massachusetts (a short drive) doesn't have a closed season. Those are potentially options for me if and when it thaws out. The trout are still in there, surviving in their lethargic states, just waiting for those first warm days of spring.

Winter Must be Tough on the Wild Ones

Here in the northeast, it's been a very snowy winter thus far. For the past few days, the temps have been in the single digits and at nighttime, well below zero. After awhile, it starts to get to you.

I haven't fished in about a month now. The days are short and cold. The fish are lethargic and sometimes it seems hardly worth the frozen fingers and toes. The fishing on the Farmington has been very off compared to last winter. Even my friends who have fished it and are very good fisherman have been doing poorly. Days like these make you long for the warmth of spring, but it is still a long time from now.

So, today I decided to try to pull myself out of my mid-winter malaise and went for a hike along a couple of my favorite local brook trout streams. One of these brooks gets stocked in early spring, but if you do a little hiking and wading, you can get into some very pretty wild fish. I didn't expect to find much open water, but I did find it in spots. Even hearing the sound of running water on a cold day like today makes you want to close your eyes and daydream about warmer days when the brookies will race up and smash a dry fly.

Making it through the winter must be tough on these little guys. Every day is a fight to survive and it makes me respect them even more. When I hold them in my hand this spring, I will appreciate their beauty, then set them free.

Here are some photos from today:

Winter photos

Just driving around the NW corner yesterday and snapped a few shots. It's been a pretty snowy winter so far and I'm already pretty sick of it, to be honest. I guess you just have to try to make the best of it.

Church in Milton













A Cold Housatonic:













Wow - this is sad - wading shoes buried in the snow:













At least the homebrew is ready - YUM!










Winter is supposed to be a contemplative season, and to some extent I guess it is. Although, right now, all I can think about is spring.

October Steel

Yes, I know it's December and I'm finally getting around to adding this to the blog. This year, my brothers Andy, John and I met in western NY to open a can of whoop ass on some steelies. This year (like last year) we were once again screwed by drought conditions, so the only creeks that were reasonably fishable were Cattauraugus Creek and later on, we moved east to the Salmon river in Pulaski, NY. One other we did fish with a small amount of success was 18 Mile Creek in the vicinity of Hamburg, NY. No special places, just public water.

Fishing was so-so. Some days we'd have 10-15 hookups, which isn't bad, but it's certainly not great. It was enough to keep the trip from being a total flame out.

I didn't fish the beads this year. I caught enough shit for that last year, but maybe I will break them out in the spring or next fall. I fished mostly pink eggs and sucker spawn. Pink always works well for me for some reason. Much better than orange or oregon cheese, red or virtually any other color. The only color that comes close is white.

At the Catt, we tried a few spots, but the reservation was the most consistent. Nothing at all in Gowanda. We also tried the Zoar recreational gorge, but nothing doing there. Perhaps we were too early for the fish to be up that high. I've also heard it said that fish will rip right through that area, but I don't know if this is true, or if anyone's gotten any data to prove it. I'm thinking probably not. It's more likely that it's such a long walk down to there, that if you get the skunk one day, you're likely to not return, which makes it easy to assume there's no fish holding down there.

Anyway, enough with the dialogue. Here are a few photos:

A few from the Catt



























Andy at the Salmon River


































I have a few more photos on my other PC that John took. I'll try to get them up in the next few days.

Wet Flies

Been busy at the vise recently, working on wets. I plan to fish them almost exclusively this upcoming season. Hopefully I will become proficient.

Here are a few photos of just some the the wets I've been tying:

Woodcock Hare's Ear









Kelso









Hares Ear








Alexandra








Peter Ross








Muddler Daddy








Invicta








Partridge and Yellow

Trip to Canada part Deux

Wow - it's been a LONG time since I put any fresh material up (as if the world was anxiously awaiting on my next posting). Just to backtrack a little, Nora and I took a trip up to the Gaspé peninsula back in the summer and I only posted roughly half the trip up, so here is the other half.

The second leg of our trip found us leaving Tadoussac, QC, taking the ferry across the St. Lawrence river, then driving along the northern edge of the Gaspé peninsula, reaching our destination of Forillon National Park(pronounced For-ee-on ~n silent). I won't put you to sleep with all the boring details of actually getting there, but the scenery was pretty much fantastic once we got above the city of Rimouski. It was one of those drives where you go around the corner and go "holy shit, look at that!" Much of the road is right on the seaway, so it's hard to keep your eyes on the road. Picturesque towns dot the way and sometimes we just had to stop and try to take it in. One of the things that caught our attention was the windmill "fields" for lack of a better term, that we saw. Curiously, only about 20% were actually operational.

Here are a few photos of the drive up:

Remember ESSO?





















WELL....

Finally after a very long drive and some anxiety over whether or not we'd actually find a campsite at Forillon, we arrived at our destination. Luckily and incredibly there were plenty of campsites available. National park, middle of summer, no reservation required. Who da thunk? Dog tired, we were treated to this view after we entered the park:
















Spectacular to say the least and it would keep getting better. We only had a couple of days to spend here, so in the morning we woke up early, had hearty breakfast and took off on a 16 or so mile hike that would take us to the tip of the peninsula. We hiked up to a lookout tower where we had fantastic views, through some pretty active bear country, and along pastoral seaside paths that eventually led us up to the lighthouse at the very tip of the peninsula. On the way back, we actually saw some whales breaching out in the bay, waterspouts and all! Fantastic.





Here are some photos from that day - starting with the hike over the stem of the peninsula up to the lookout tower:

































Incidentally, we had binoculars with us and you could look down from the tower and see seals playing/eating/surviving/doing whatever the F seals do down in the surf below. Pretty cool.























Now for the seaside part of the hike. This is along the south shoreline of the tip of the Gaspe. The path is part of the international Appalachian trail, which is an extension of the original AT. This part starts at Mt. Katahdin in Maine and the terminus is the tip of the Gaspe. The trail goes through an old fishing village that the national park service bought out in the 1970's and many but not all the buildings are preserved. Anyway, I'll let the photos do the talking.































Nora and Dave at the very tip of the Gaspe!








The lighthouse:























Here are some photos from the walk back to the car. As I said before, the area is infested with bears. They feed on Osier and Raspberries. We didn't see any on our hike, but we found plenty of evidence:

























OK, at this point, my ADHD is kicking in and I'll just post a few more photos of the rest of the trip, which includes a sunrise on the beach (we actually came across a porcupine in the path) and the drive back through the touristy town of Perce and it's famous Perce Rock:


























Perce Rock




















So, that's pretty much about it - we had a stop or two along the way, we stopped to visit some of Nora's friends from New Milford who actually have a cottage on the Gaspe that they paid 10G's for, remarkable... I wish I had the camera when we walked out their back yard to the ocean, incredible scenery.

One of the funny parts of the trip was the border crossing when we were coming back to the states and being interrogated by border patrol: "uh, so where you folks goin' tonight?" I reply, "well sir, we're trying to make Caribou." Nora got a grand kick out of that... like we were in the middle of a snowstorm and Caribou was 500 miles away. Here it is the middle of August. She still laughs about it. Ok, I can take it.