I shouldn’t have expected it to be easy. As good as I’ve become at being able to fool trout on the fly in just about any possible scenario, that was earned but putting in my time and having to take some hard lessons along the way. It stands to reason then that my skill at landing warm water fish on the fly rod isn’t going to come easy, and I can’t expect to just go out and “sack em” right away. Last night was my first real lesson in warm water fly fishing and the fish don’t grade on a curve.
Still not having the heavyweight equipment I needed, I wanted to do some fishing and I thought maybe I could kill two birds with one stone. I didn’t want to drive far and I still needed to see the full stretch of stream I’m learning on Yellow Creek so I figured I’d take the heaviest setup I have and fish wooly buggers and possibly hook into a smallmouth or carp. I figured even if I did hook a carp I’d probably get my line broken anyway but it would be fun to try.
My plan was to start at Carp Pool. This time I drove through Homer City and parked at the parking area instead of on the Indiana side of the bridge that’s being replaced. This saved me a little walking, although it was a few extra miles of driving. I’ll be glad when that project is over. The water was low enough that crossing the stream to get to the mining road wan’t bad. For whatever reason, it seemed like I arrived at Carp Pool in record time.
I could immediately see several carp in the pool and I was excited for the possibility of hooking one. I started with a brown wooly bugger but had no takes. I then tried a couple variations of mop flies before going back to a bugger. I decided to try the largest olive colored one I had and it paid off, albeit briefly. I finally got one of the massive fish to take but it broke my light tippet within seconds. I knew my setup was light for what I was trying to do but this drove the point home.
After about an hour of frustrating fishing, I started working downstream with a plan to just work a bugger with the hopes it could attract a variety of fish. At this point I just wanted to catch something. Anything. At the Rock Trench I encountered even more carp than what were in Carp Pool, and as an added bonus, two nice pike swimming in tandem. I must have thrown 100 casts with no takes. I even tried a large streamer trying to entice a pike bite, but they completely ignored my offerings. With the sun setting and having not covered nearly as much water as I was hoping to, I decided to move quickly downstream and focus on scouting more than anything else.
After a little walking I encountered the old bridge abutments I remember seeing when I was a 20 something young adult bait fishing. There’s a decent pool there so I stopped to fish it and was pleasantly surprised when I hooked up with and landed a young smallmouth. The streamer was about half the size of the fish! At least I didn’t get skunked I thought as I snapped a quick photo and dropped it back into the water.
From there I hurriedly made my way downstream so I could cross before it got too dark to see. I marked a few holes on my onX app and even found one hole that had a white-colored fish lurking in it. I’m still not sure what it was but naturally I named the spot White Fish. While the catching wasn’t great, the exploring was and I look forward to returning with some heavier artillery to try again. I’m not giving up until I land a carp or pike from that stream on the fly!