Dry or Die Trout fishing

Casselmen May, 25, 2012

My usual fishing partner John C and I did a suicide run to the Casselmen yesterday.  Which really isn’t all that difficult with it being about two hours from home. We did however compare the distance to Mossy Creek, Spring Creek at State College, Tyrone for the Little Juniata, even Pens Creek because we both wanted to get on the legendary Green Drake hatch.  Ironically almost all those other famous trout streams were about the same distance give or take 15 minutes.  But the casselmen was the closest by about 30 minutes and being that I had some work to do in the morning, a 10 oclock departure would be pushing it for the other streams. Plus I knew the Casselmen very well and knew it’s the place for numbers.  We both hadn’t had a good trout afternoon in a while and both wanted good insect activity.  We were both kind of in a “dry or die” kind of mood.  Even though we both fish for musky with the heaviest of conventional tackle, we will both chunk bait for giant blue catfish when the opportunity arises but we also like our quality trout fishing.  John probably more so than I as he chose to go to college at a school with the Yellow Breeches practically running through its campus some 15 years ago. 

Okay, back to the fishing.  We get there sometime after noon.  Set up in a far away difficult to get to spot with one other car.  Most spaces had company already up and down the stream. We knew conditions were low at around 50cfs.  Which is about at the bottom of the fishes comfort level and mine for that matter on that river. I prefer to fish the stream around 150cfs, even 180cfs after a decent rain or on its way down after a high water event.  At that stage fish are literally everywhere, behind every rock where back casts catch fish as well as forward casts.  But at 50cfs the flow is slow and low and it concentrates the fish making it seem overly unnatural.  The water temperature was into the 70’s already.  The fishing this season there is just about over.  What will today bring?

We immediately get into fish on dries as there was a decent breeze and some caddis dancing on the surface from time to time.  Nothing huge, beat up fresh stockies most likely.  We worked upstream passing a lot of bed rock and featureless water until we get to a long flat stretch.  I almost shot straight past it to find the head of the pool and the riffle but John noticed a few rises. We had found the mother lode of fish in the tailout of the long slow pool and they were regularly rising to something.  Something very small and we noticed midges and maybe #26 ants or something in the surface film with the occasional shuck from a larger mayfly.  We worked over these fish taking turns casting for a couple hours in the hot mid day sun.  The fish would occasionally come up and hit my leader knots of all things but I did manage the only brown trout of the trip with a #22 midge emerger off of a beetle patter.  It was a quality fish of about 14 inches.   That was all we managed from this spot where there were dozens of rising fish, some massive golden trout were seen but easily spooked and the place was just chocker block full of fish in the slow water but they were defiantly difficult to entice.  If not impossible.  We wasted most of the day playing with those fish too. 

We moved on up to the head of the pool in long perfect looking riffle. The riffle itself seemed lifeless but the few pockets down below in the deeper run had a lot of fish.  Rises were seen easily too.  I picked away at a few fish on caddis flies and John worked up river.  I knew that the water up river wasn’t the greatest but had a lot of riffles.  I wanted to be right in the best looking riffle come evening when the finest hour was approaching fast.  John went up and the light grew shorter. Things started to get very interesting.  March browns starting swirling over head by the hundreds.  Previously in the late afternoon I was only able to hit fish in this one tiny little pocket below the riffle all the way across the river.  But once these bugs starting showing themselves, they started feeding much better.  But again, only in this one spot and only after I’d let it rest a few minutes after pulling a fish from it.  Then I’d see some rises in the riffle itself.  That got more intense as it got darker.  Sulfers had joined the March browns and things were coming to life.  The riffle literally exploded wutg life with fish coming out of the wood work and a strike almost every cast.  If I could dance and skip my March Brown fly across the surface the fish would fight over it.  It was incredible to see a place that previously was deserted of fish literally explode with fish.  Even golden trout showed up to the party when there were none in sight a few minutes earlier.  The rainbows I was catching in the riffle right at my feet appeared in far better condition than the fish from earlier in the day.  They had almost pinkish fins with a  more robust body form and almost a steelhead like appearance with bright, flawless silver sides.  I think these were the warm water variety rainbows so common on the North Branch of the Potomac and the Youghiogeny.  They were no where to be seen earlier but were throwing themselves at the fly in the waning moments of the finest hour.  It was dry fly fishing zen.  My last March brown finally was far too wet to ever get to float again but even just swinging the fly in the riffle got action.  When I was able to bounce the fly off the riffles with my 7’ 3wt it would almost always get a rise, even at the end of my rod. 

The fishing stayed good even after true dark.  It was 9:30pm when it finally slowed down and it was well past pitch dark.  But I was still fishing and so was John, somewhere up river.  I thought about a spinner fall, and I could still hear the occasional rise.  I’ve known from experience on popular trout streams that the largest of the large, the top dogs of the river come out to play at night to avoid the angling pressure of the day time.  Could it be that time? I had my last strike around 9:40pm just as John showed up.  We stuck it out another 20 minutes and walked back to the truck to call it a night.  John C also said this was one of the craziest hatches and dry fly outings he’s ever had.  I agreed with him completely.  What a day.  Home just after midnight with that happy and content feeling you often feel after a fine, successful fishing trip. 

We were too busy catching fish to get any photos of the fish.  I was holding out for one of those swimming logs that are common to that river but we never caught anything of any size.  Mostly 11 to 14 inch range.  But we certainly made up for it in numbers.  It was an insane numbers day.  Gotta love it when a plan comes together. 

The first picture below is a cell phone picture of a swarm of March Browns dancing over my head.  They later danced right on the riffle as dark 30 was knocking at the door. The fish were litterally throwing themselves after them, sometimes going competely airborne.  

Just a few shots of the river from my cell.  Too busy catching fish to take many other photos.