Ice Out

As the ice gets pushed apart and sucked downstream in long flowing sheets of solid water, the freshly-stocked trout scurry and hide in every place of shelter they can find. When you do see one sitting in a nice feeding lane, they are so wary and nervous that they move aside for your flies as well as some natural food stuff floating past them towards some other downstream location.

It was supposed to be mid 50's

For my first outing of 2014, I chose to go to Neshannock Creek in Volant, Pennsylvania. It was supposed to be a bright day, in the mid to upper 50's. It turned out to be an overcast day in the mid 30's to low 40's. Ice blocks were all along the banks, as if some great explosion had taken place and left its debris along the shore in the form of ice chunks, about ten inches thick and in irregular shaped blocks between three or four feet in length and two or three feet in height. These blocks of ice make it less convenient to access the stream waters, but once in, the  temperature was fine and the fish should have been biting.

I'm thinking the fish were very spooked from the stocking activities taking place. Not only were they being ferried from the stocking truck to the creek in large buckets, but many of them were placed in barrels strapped to canoes to be released as they floated downstream to the lower end of the Delayed Harvest Artificial Lures Only (DHALO) section of Neshannock Creek. All of these traumatic activities have to put fish in a spooked state I would think. After a week or two, they should be fine though. By that time, they might also have become adjusted to living in a real stream and learn what constitutes real food. In other words, they might have become adjusted and learn to recognize insect larvae and small fish as food rather than the bland fish pellets they are fed at the fish hatcheries.

This stuff is what gives stocked trout that grainy or mealy taste.

While wading the stream and fishing a few holes, I met a few guys out doing the same and having the same amount of luck I was having. I think one of them mentioned something about needing to catch a fish to consider the day a success and I replied that I had merely set out to get out of the house that day and with that, I considered my mission to have been accomplished.

My small stream setup

This was my first official outing of the year with my new Orvis Clearwater 7.5' 3wt fly rod and Orvis Battenkill II reel. What a beautiful rod and reel. I love how it casts. I also had a few other new items out for their maiden runs, so to speak. One item is my new Brodin Phantom Cutthroat landing net (which I have not yet had the pleasure of needing, much less using) and another item, perhaps my favorite of all my new gear, is my new Simms Guide jacket. It's a Goretex jacket and has many very cool features, such as small inner pockets to hold hand warmers commonly sold in sporting goods stores everywhere, drain holes in all pockets to prevent water buildup inside pockets, a large hood that folds up nicely inside the collar, and an inner and outer sleeve cuff system that will surely keep the wet out and prevent hangups on my line as I'm casting.

My favorite fishing jacket!