The Release

I haven't felt much like blogging lately.  So here's a few fish I have caught recently on their way back home.  

Spring Has Sprung a Leek

With spring, lots of new activities, and chores, arise faster than the daffodils.  For me, this always includes morel mushroom hunting (let's just say it's not my year) and digging up leeks.

Wild leeks, or ramps, are significantly smaller than the version you find in the grocery store but taste, at least three times, better and are extremely versatile.  My favorite recipe is always bacon and leek mac and cheese but I use them as a substitute for onions or scallions in most recipes this time of year.  

Another wild edible in abundance this time of year, to the dismay of most, are dandelions.  I stumbled across this stretch of a simile the other day from my angst-filled college years--

Boom. Sunshine explosion.

"Life is like dandelions.  Beautiful yellow cups that everyone hates.  People tug at its tap root, kick at its developing blossom, spray its leaves with poison.  At the end of its full week of life, they hate it even more.  A perfect cloud soft, bleach white sphere that only wishes more sunshine for each lawn.  If they only looked softly at the petals they would see its characters beauty.  But they rip, causing a slow ooze of milky blood to sticky up their hands.  Releasing a tacky smell that holds for a moment once inside you and leaves a bitter, acrid taste that binds to your throat.  Each autumn the flowers are forgotten under a golden red shower and they whither.  Spring comes and everyone hates them again.  A vibrantly defenseless explosion of light rashly hated and rashly forgotten. Each foot a truncheon on their persistence to lighten the world."

Brilliantly written, I know.  I suppose I was somewhat right back then.  Life is like dandelions in the sense that someone can come by at any time, pop your head off, and fry it up in some butter.  With a simple corn meal/flour batter and some sauteing you have got a great appetizer or side dish.

While we are on the topic of wild edibles, the local stream has been packed full of non-native trout again.  As the good ecologist I am, I went forth to help lower the numbers of fish and prevent the further spread of the invasive fish.  

Day old stocked trout are like confused children who had cruel parents their whole life.  Their parents tell the children how wonderful candy is, but they have to be very cautious what pieces they eat because some are poison.  The trout are dumped in the stream used to eating pelleted meal, and when a tasty mayfly bonbon or a minnow chocolate bar slips past them they hesitate.  They look at the sweet and turn away, then change their mind and return to inspect it again until it floats out of range or another more daring, or rebellious, child engulfs the treat.

I stood in the stream and watched the trout behave this way.  There was a pod of thirty or so fish that would chase anything that moved but would hesitate, turn around, hesitate and then decide if the the item was a food source.  It was an interesting show, especially when a black bunny leech confection was the potential toxicant.  After a few fish on the fly rod it was time to fill the stringer which was done in short work with a panther martin spinner which netted me my first brown trout.

I named him "dinner"

Apple and leek stuffed trout with a lemon caper butter

 As for the chores, I got the garden dug, and what a chore it was.  Digging, pulling out tree roots, dumping in peat moss and compost, mixing and leveling was done in the last two days.  I am attempting modified square foot gardening with the hopes of filling forty-eight square feet with over a hundred plants, as well as making an herb planter for the deck.  I'm sure more posts will come regarding my successes.  If someone is in need of some sod that has a small potential to actually revert back into grass, I am willing to part with the pile in the picture.

The dirt hole.

And this is the part of the blog post where I dump a bunch of photos that don't need a narrative.

Chomp Chomp

Nom nom

The release

Fat rock bass

Story of my life.

                                      

Challenge: Catch a trout on the fly rod - COMPLETED

Opening day of Pennsylvania trout season, 2012.

Hoards of people were clogging the stream banks.  A dozen people crammed around every four foot deep hole a stocked trout could be swimming in.  Before the sun even showed the top of its head over the horizon, cans of beer were already being discarded into the bushes.  Gobs of brightly colored powerbait floated downstream, completely ignored by the hundreds of trout that eyed it from below.  Poachers snuck more than their days limit, packing their stringers full of any trout they caught or snagged.  Camp sites were illegally established and improperly cleaned up leaving mounds of trash and smoldering ashes around their foundations.  The trees were adorned with opening day ornaments from the errant casters.  The fish huddled together in pods whose numbers rapidly diminished, and they knew that even if they survived the day, they still would not live past the warmer water temperatures only two months away.

Every year it's the same scenario and after my first opening day last year, I didn't think I would attempt it again.  Yet, there I was at seven in the morning, an hour before the opening bell rang, sitting stream side at my claimed spot.   I chose the furthest point between the two parking areas in hopes that the other anglers would be too obese and too lazy to walk the half mile to find a fishing hole.  And it also had the advantage of being one of my lucky spots on the stream.  For the first forty-five minutes I was alone, but more and more anglers showed up until five of us would be casting into the same twenty square foot area.  The second eight AM came, our lures and bait and line and sinkers were thrown into the water at the unsuspecting fish.  I hooked the first fish out of the five anglers in only a few minutes after the season began on an inline spinner.  Being net-less, I fumbled with the fish with my hands in the forty something degree water until the trout found a way off my hook. 

I generally am happy with the first fish of the day.  The first fish means I am doing something correctly and I am almost guaranteed more fish if I replicate the conditions.  This feeling feels cheapened on opening day; at least for it does for me.  I knew these trout were put here and would eat nearly anything put in their view.  I knew where they were, what they wanted, and how to get them to commit.  It was catching fish in a nearly non-metaphorical barrel.   The Walmart version of trout.  But, I like Walmart, and I like fish, and I have little shame left from the time my mother and sisters dragged a thirteen year old me along to go bra shopping.  For them, not me.  So, I continued casting into the bargain bin hoping there was an amazing deal hidden at the bottom everyone else had overlooked and I continued to ignore the pins and needles in my hands.  Soon, that feeling was overwhelmed by, and probably a contributing factor to,  my lightheadedness.  I deemed it a bad idea to have vertigo while standing knee deep in a stream so I chose to go home and shove my frozen hands into my armpits for a painful fifteen minutes.  

After the dethawing, I tied a few new flies, checked that the air temperature had risen fifteen degrees, and headed back stream side to test the new ties.  I waded back to my spot just in time to see all the other anglers leaving with full stringers.  This left my back cast clear and the entire hole to drift through without worries of tangling someone else's line.  I found my casting rhythm pretty quickly and worked the hole until I saw a flash of silver and felt my fly stop.  I set the hook only to find the line snapped just above my knot.  Well, at least I knew the flies worked.  I tied on a new rabbit, metal, and lead amalgam and ensured my line wouldn't snap this time.  I had a few casts into the water and a few more short strikes until I finally hooked into my first trout on the fly rod.  This time I didn't feel so debased when I landed the fish.  Instead, I liked this feeling.  Tricking a trout on my own fly that I created only an hour ago added a lot more excitement to the catch.  I put my fish on my stringer, smiled, and waded back home to cross the first challenge off the list... and to make dinner.

Not my fish, but I assure you it looked just like this.

My Greatest Fish Fear

I have climbed fifty foot rock faces without a harness.  I have slalomed through white water rapids.  I have descended snow covered mountains on a thin piece of fiberglass and plastic.  I have dove off a 200 foot suspension tower over an abandoned rock quarry dangling from my ankles by rubber bands.  I have slept among the bears and other noises of the night miles from civilization.

I would like to say that I am pretty adventurous.  If there is something that is dangerous and I haven't tried, I would probably give it a go.  I would even attempt to sit in the Devil's Armchair.  But, there is one thing that has plagued the deep, dark basement of my brain since I picked up a fly rod.  It started out as a minute thought, one that I could avoid without issue, but lately has been gnawing at me more and more.  My greatest fish fear is....

...not eating blowfish...

...not swimming with tiger fish.  Although I would like to Wade with that Jeremy guy... 

...not even noodling for sharks...

My greatest fishing fear is catching this guy...

OH THE TERROR!

Maybe I should say catching a trout on the fly rod.  And maybe I shouldn't say catching a trout on a fly rod, but attempting it.

"Isn't the fly rod made for catching trout?" 

Well, yes.  I suppose it is.  I have spent my whole life fishing, but it was only in the last year that I caught my first trout.  Since then I have tried chasing stocked trout with the fly rod with no luck.  This consisted of only using wooly buggers and bead head nymphs that I've tied as my trout tying arsenal is limited.  I could probably buy a few flies that would help me catch my first fly rod trout, but I would really like that fish to come on a fly I've tied myself.  That wish brings up another problem however.

"You're sausage fingers?"

Hush you.  My flies up to size 10 look pretty decent, but when it comes to the smaller sizes its not pretty.  This skill I'm sure will come with time and a few dozen unusable flies.

"I thought stocked trout were dumb and will eat anything.  Like fluorescent gobs of dough."

Ok.  That seems to be true.  However, rainbow collored dough balls may look more like food than the flies I tie.  I'm working on it and I have a few patterns in mind that I think I can handle.

"You know trout season starts in a month?"

I do know this.  I still have time to learn some new flies.  But I'm going to throw another challenge in there.  I'm going to tie this mystery fly with the materials I already have.  Part of this is to prevent me from buying more animal pieces, and I've been thinking about adding a new segment to the blog.  We will see how my ambitions and self confidence get along before I divulge more information on that.

"When are you going to work on your casting?"

What's wrong with my casting?

"Uhhh, nothing..."

Well, maybe I could work on my untangling skills.

Things like this:

Too many false casts
...ok, it was a 350º pan.

make it hard to do things like this:

Fish on!
...ok, it was a snagged rock.

But I did so anyway and got some of these:

Stocked trout, not on the fly

Green sunfish, on the fly

One of them I didn't get:

Wheres Waldo baby musky

 And some autumn type pictures:

Mothers and their fallen

Poplar Puddle

Lonely Lambsear

Reds and Browns

Open and Closed

Oh, and happy birthday to the best guy I know!

A summary of the year so far.

I have started to fly fish this year only and I am tying my own flies and learning as I go.  It seems like every year I have a bunch of "firsts," but I suppose that's how learning goes.


I went trout fishing for the first time April and battled the other anglers on opening day to get a spot on the water.  It was an experience to fish sided by side with hundreds of other hook and bait equipped predators and an experience I'm not sure I want to experience again.  Once the crowds died down a week later I went out with my spinning tackled and got 3 12" stocked rainbows on spinners. I kept them all since they will all die with the higher temperatures of the summer but I found out that farm raised trout tastes like the fish food they feed them.  If someone has a recipe that make these more palatable please share.

I then started fly fishing once it got warmer and used my own hand tied flies and this was my first not so large largemouth on the fly rod.  Since then, there have only been 2 occasions I've been fly fishing and I haven't hooked a bass.  Albeit, there are quite a few small fish in there, but they are still enjoyable to catch.

I have since then started hitting smaller streams near me and got this 15" largemouth on a black wooly bugger.  This fly has gotten me countless fish since May, but lately the fish haven't been reacting to it as strongly so I will need to find a new go to fly for the warmer months and deeper water.

Greedy

I also landed this 18.5" smallie which didn't look too healthy.  He had a healing lip from a previous encounter with a non-digestible prey item.

So far that smallmouth is the largest fish Ive gotten on the fly rod.  I have been trying to sight fish for carp and have made over a hundred casts to roaming carp but haven't had any bites yet.  Of course only about 10 of those casts have been accurate and I have made my goal this summer to get a carp on the fly.

I went to Sea Isle City, NJ for some flounder fishing and managed to catch 4 while my girlfriend caught 7.  We both managed to get an 18" flounder for our biggest catch.

Lastly, me and a coworker went to the Susquehanna a couple weeks ago by Harrisburg.  We rented a canoe and made an 8 mile drift.  It took us until the second half of the day to find out what they wanted and we both ended up catching 8 Smallmouth each.  The smallest being 13" and we both caught a 19 incher.  All were caught on a shad colored Big O crankbait.  My crank bait wasn't producing but luckily he had 2 of them and was willing to share.  This year the Susquehanna down here has imposed a strict catch and release policy due to the declining smallmouth population due to pollution, over harvesting and predation.  The 19" is my biggest smallmouth to date and was probably 4+ pounds.

.

So far it's been a great year.  I haven't done any bait fishing except for the flounder and for catfish but I only caught a few small channels and bull head using chicken livers.  All the fish of decent size broke me off in the rocks too quick so I have to find a different, less rocky, spot.  I have caught at least 1 keeper bass each day the last four days all on my fly rod.  I am a novice at fishing and fly fishing so for me, I am doing well.  I have also fallen into the water 4 times since May resulting in 7 wet feet, 3 wet pairs of pants 2 wet shirts and 1 cell phone paperweight.  I now keep all electronics in a ziplock bag while wading. I'm not as graceful as I once was.