Musings from Jay
I know we are a bit delayed with this blog - as you can imagine, I’ve been on the water a lot recently. So what’s going on with the fishing?
Starting with the trout fishing. In an earlier blog, I talked about the slow start we were having with the bug hatches. As you can imagine, everything is now back on schedule and we have a full menu of insects coming off (nature always seem to find a way of getting back on schedule). The real challenge with the trout fishing we are now experiencing is low water conditions. We have not seen any significant rainfall in over four weeks and water flows are starting to get very low. Despite this, water temperatures on several of my streams are still ideal. However, the big challenge in these low water conditions is we are fishing to extremely spooky trout. This is especially true in our freestone streams. When fishing these streams, we need to be extremely careful not to spook the fish and put then down. Under these conditions, it is better not to get in the water if avoidable, use longer leaders and more delicate tippet, and earth-tones or muted colored clothes. Also, your best fishing is going to be in late afternoon into dark. This is alsl when most of the hatches are going to happen, plus the spinner fall. Most of your good fishing is going to happen during this spinner fall. However, one of the exceptions will be fishing the spring creeks where you'd fish as you would under normal conditions (a quick, shameless plug to look for a trout fishing video coming soon on the Jay Peck Guides & Lost Rivers Fishing YouTube channel where we are fishing Spring Creek during the early stages of the sulphur hatch and the trout were focused on feeding on nymphs).
For those of you who are interested in what bugs are hatching, the short answer is just about everything right now: tail end of march browns and gray foxes, midway through the sulphur hatch and of course there’s always olives coming off somewhere.
Finally, Rick and myself have also spent a little time recently fishing for Northern Pike, working on the toothy critter program. It is still a little early for the surface bite but streamer fishing is getting it done (once again, another shameless plug that there is a pike fishing video in the works).
Until next time,
Jay
