Better’n Yesterday

Better’n Yesterday

5/14/26 

 On Wednesday, the guy the next campsite over, who doesn’t fish, asked me how I did fishing?  I told him about the conditions were kind of tough. On Thursday He asked me how I did? I told him better’n yesterday. 

 I’ve been going up to Potter County, to trout fish, for about the past 30 years. I go up to dry fly fish Kettle Creek in mid May when most of the mayfly hatches appear. If I just wanted to catch trout I’d stay at home. Mid May there are usually many mayfly hatches that I keep well entertained with dry fly fishing. This year so far it wasn’t to be so, yet! 

 Tuesday I set up my camper at Ole’ Bull campground. Wednesday I went to Kettle Creek to fish. The water was high, but wadeable, but the current was fast. Once I got thigh high deep it was kind of scary so I stayed knee deep. It was a chilly overcast day so there wasn’t any hatch to speak of or any fish rising. I did catch a few on Woolly Buggers and a Pink Sucker Spawn but for the 5-6 hours I spent fishing wasn’t an impressive day to tell a story about.    

 Wednesday evening it stormed and even hailed. I knew Kettle wasn’t going to be any better off then the day before so my plan was to fish a smaller mountain creek instead. One thing about mountain streams is they seldom get too muddy to fish. They may rise but they really don’t get muddy.

 I put my 7’6” 4 weight Powel fly rod together and snapped on a Woolly Bugger at my campsite and headed south to the mountain stream. After I parked along the roadside, I got my gear on and headed to my first stop on the creek.

 The air was much cooler along the mountain water. Green forest trees and grass lined the banks as far as the eye could see. Birds chirped in the background to the main resonance of the riffling water downstream. It was a picture worth mounting!

 Upstream, I was wading slow and easy as the water was flowing mirror clear. Reflection from the rising sun, when the clouds gave way, was throwing bank-side shadows on the surface water. I was making cross creek casts from a distance and trying to keep my silhouette not to be detected. I didn’t wade down creek very far when I stopped along the bank in ankle deep water. The creek was wide, within casting distance, and looked deep enough for trout to hold anywhere. The riffles and waves distorted my vision seeing through the water and I would imagine the trout had a hard time determining anything standing motionless. I’m sure they would capture movement and be wary so I stayed pretty much stationary and made slow movements. 

 I made a cast across creek and let the bugger swing down creek towards the deeper water just before the current flowed over rocks and boulders causing shallow wavier water. Almost at the end of the swing I felt a bump but it wasn’t very hard. I let the bugger dangle a bit, when it got to the end of the swing, but nothing grabbed it. I made another cast in the same manner at the same distance. This time, at the end of the swing, I felt a nudge and my fly line stopped arcing. It wasn’t like a hard hit but as if the trout saw the bugger coming and opened its mouth to let it in. I reared back the rod and the rod bowed but I didn’t think it was anything uncommon being the under current might have been strong enough to make it feel like a heavy fish. Bringing the trout towards me wasn’t easy but he didn’t put up a major battle. At the beginning it was if he had just awoken from a dream and wasn’t in full awareness of what was happening after his first breakfast meal. He had strength enough to keep his distance but wasn’t the head-shaking, rough and tumble fight I would have expected. Once across from me I could see he was a colorful rainbow and a nice size trout for this small mountain creek. He took off towards the far side as my 4 weight arced with the swimming trout. I didn’t force him but let him use up his energy fighting the current and my arcing rod. I got him near me and scooped him up. What a nice rainbow. 

Well, that was definitely worth a cigar. 

 I checked the bugger for any defects and didn’t see anything wrong with it. I made another cast across creek and near the end of the swing, wham, another strike. This nudge was a little harder than the last. I was bringing the fish towards me but he was putting up a pretty good fight, like the piercing of the hook hit a nerve. The battle was short lived though. When I got him closer I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was another nice size colorful rainbow. When I got him in the net I shook my head and thought “this couldn’t be the same trout I just caught?” No, this one looked a little chubbier. I mean, what’s the odds of the same trout striking a second time after he got caught and netted in a matter of 10 minutes? 

 That was the big excitement for the day. I fished a couple of different areas along the catch and release section and caught mostly rainbow trout on buggers. Some of the rainbows were nice size and all the trout gave good lasting battles against the 4 weight.

 

I tried a couple of dry caddis but that wasn’t on the trouts menu. It got a little warmer and started to drizzle. After that I called it a day and headed back up to the campground along the dirt road and then to the main highway.

~doubletaper