You take the good with the bad

Marty finally broke free from his leash this past Sunday and was able to make it out for a day of chuckin' flies to the brookies of SNP. We exchanged a few text messages on Saturday night, trying to decide on the best stream to concentrate our efforts. Not being able to come to a decision, we decided that we'd ponder it on the drive out. So we met up around 11:00am determined to sore-lip some brook trout but having no clear destination in mind. After wavering between a few different creeks, we finally decided on a Southern district West sloper that neither of us had ever been on before. Marty had received some intel from a seemingly reliable source about big fish in this particular drainage and we were both eager to see what it was all about. We arrived at the lower boundary around 1:00 and started in with high hopes. The lower part of this stream turned out to be plenty wide but mostly shallow with long stretches of ankle deep, unproductive water.

Since neither of us had any experience on this crick and we didn't want to miss anything, we decided to jump right in near the bottom. Deep holes that seemed capable of supporting big fish were few and far between. With all of the rain and snow melt from the previous week and with our favorite East slopers still running high and strong, we were surprised at the paltry volume of water in this one. We wondered what this place must look like in the summer if it looked like this now...showing its bones:

We did manage to find some rising fish and tossing dry flies was a welcome change from all the lead slingin' we've been doing over the last few months. We found no evidence of any big boys but the little ones did seem to be fat and healthy and they attacked a parachute adams with gusto.


We continued upstream until the creek broke into 3 different stems and things got pretty skinny. Tiring of catching 4" fish, we finally came to the decision that this creek just wasn't our particular cup of tea. The intel that we had received seemed curious, but we chalked it up to different strokes for different folks and figured that we might have just enough time to hot foot it back to the truck and make our way back up to Skyline Drive to check out a favorite East sloper.

Fast forward about an hour and we arrived at the new locale at the upper parking lot with enough light in the sky to make the 1/2 mile hike downhill to cover the best spots. The hike back out would have to be done in the dark (something we are all too familiar with). When we got down there, the water volume was a little more to our liking.

And Marty pulled this dude out from the base of the waterfall. A fine specimen:

We fished out the light and each caught a few more fish, although mine turned out to be pretty dinky, leaving me wondering why I switched streams, drove an hour, and hiked down a mountain to catch the same small fish. Sometimes you gotta take the good with the bad I guess. All in all, it was a good day with good company even if the fishing turned out to be pretty sub-par. I got to see some new water and check another stream off the list, and that ain't all bad. It definitely beats workin' any day.