01/26/09
Destinations:
I doubt that many of you will be traveling to and fishing the Smokies to fish this month although I
hope you do. January and the first part of February are probably the coldest times of the year and
you will have to pick out the better days to expect much success fishing the freestone streams.
By the end of February, everyone will be doing their best to force the bugs to hatch and the trout to
respond even though they will probably have to wait a few more days to see any surface action.
That considered, I thought I would write about some fishing trips we have made to various other
destinations. Don't expect these articles to win any awards, just tell you about some things I
hope you will find interesting and a few that I look back on with a gleam in my eye.
Fly Fishing the Beaverkill, New York - Part 2:
As I mentioned yesterday, we have not had a very good experience with the
Beaverkill, mainly because of the time of year we fished the stream. Only once out
of the three times we fished there was the water below 65 degrees. That was during
the month of May a few years ago.
The lower section of the Beaverkill is much larger. It contains the water from the
Willowemoc River. This section of the river has two no-kill sections where you must
release the trout. It consist of some very nice water with a lot of riffles. There are
also some very long pools in this section, some of them famous for the stories that
have been written about over the years.
During the two days we fished the river in May, we were able to catch about twenty
trout. Three or four of them were in the 14 inch category and maybe one was over
16 inches. I suppose that is a decent catch but it certainly isn't anything to brag
about for the time we put in There were tons of insects hatching. Several species of
caddisflies and a few mayflies were hatching at the same time. We found Quill
Gordons and Hendricksons on the water at the same time. We have not seen that
situation occur since anywhere.
There were also a lot of fly fisherman on the river. It was almost what you would call
crowded. The problem I noticed was that everyone was wading all over the river,
everywhere it was not too deep to wade, and spooking the trout. I have never
watched so many anglers trying to cast 90 feet. It was unbelievable. It was more of
a casting contest than a fly-fishing event. I have no idea who had implanted such
casting strategy into those anglers minds. It just seemed no one was interested in
catching trout. They were all interested in casting a long way. They literally beat the
river to death. Some were casting upstream and other were casting downstream.
We never saw the first angler catch a fish even though we were in sight of at least
one angler all day long. All of our fish came in short periods of time. We would go
an hour or two without a take and then manage to catch two or three trout within a
few minutes. I think it all had to do with fishing somewhere the water had not been
beaten up with bright, colorful, fluorescent fly lines.
I certainly don't want anyone to take our experience on the Beaverkill to be the
normal situation. We have not fished the river but those three different times, two of
which were during the hot summer when no one was around. The other time which
was in May when we were obviously fishing during a very popular time. Outside our
motel room, we heard reports of many trout that had been caught both days we
were there. I can only report what we saw and what we caught. I certainly don't want
to degrade or underrate this famous river in any way. It is a beautiful river and our
experience there was well worth our time. I hope we get the chance to fish the
Beaverkill again.
Copyright 2009 James Marsh