I can only manage the long drive down to Burkesville for trout fishing about once a week. I'd like to hit the water more often than that, so I thought I'd give the North Fork of Elkhorn Creek a try. It's only about a 45 minute drive from my house. The North Fork is slow-current, warm water fishing. It's got some bass and panfish in it. I've caught a few of both on spinning tackle using plastic worms and small crankbaits. This time I brought my 7 weight fly rod with the sink-tip line and some small flies and poppers -- the same setup I use for fresh water fishing in Florida. My expectations were pretty low for this trip. But it was a beautiful afternoon and it's a short drive to the boat ramp (compared to Bukesville), so I decided to give it a try.
I started out throwing a San Juan Worm, which is a small plastic wormy-type fly normally used in trout streams. It was still on my leader from my last trip to the Cumberland. I thought maybe the bass and panfish in the North Fork would think it looked like a caterpillar fallen from a tree.
Well, after about twenty minutes not much was happening, so I switched to one of the tiny green popper flies I had such good luck with in Florida. I had reached a shady section of the creek where the bank was steep and strewn with rocks. I caught a small bluegill almost immediately and then another one a cast or two later. As I worked my way down that shady bank I picked up more small fish every half dozen casts or so. I'm not kidding about "small." Some of these fish would have made a good live bait to throw with a spinning outfit. I hadn't brought anything but my 7 weight, so I just kept casting the TGP and catching fish. I even got a largemouth bass to grab it.
I fished from 2 until 5 p.m. and caught about 15 fish altogether, so it was one of those trips that turn out much better than expected.
Getting my Gheenoe re-trailered at the boat ramp was tricky. The ramp, though made of grooved cement, is covered in moss and is about the slipperiest thing I've ever tried to stand on. I did manage to get my boat back on the trailer without falling on my butt, mainly because I kept myself upright by holding onto either the trailer or the boat itself for balance.
Video of the trip is here:
http://youtu.be/-s8fT0m4Ku4
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Cumberland River Nymphing
I did my weekly trip to the Cumberland yesterday. It was hot and humid on the river. Fog started to develop in mid-afternoon but then the sun came out again and burned it off again. Threatened thunderstorms didn't develop.
Since I haven't had much luck lately with streamers, I spent almost the whole day throwing a double nymph combination (size 16 Pheasant Tail, size 20 Copper John) under an indicator and split shot. Action was OK, not as good as last time. I got three fish to the boat and lost four or five others before I could reach them with the net. For a while there were quite a few midges flitting about. Every now and then I'd see a mayfly or caddis. A few trout were eating something either on or just under the surface. Could have been dead midges on the surface or some kind of emerger. I did one long drift with dry flies: a hopper and a light Cahill, which resembled the mayflies I was seeing. My dry fly casting isn't the greatest but because I was in a boat drifting at the exact speed of the current, once my flies plopped down on the surface they ought to have looked pretty natural. I got a couple drifts right over the top of some fish that had surfaced a few seconds earlier. But nothing came up for my flies. Since the nymphs were working, more or less, I went back to them late in the day, when I caught a small brown trout and a bigger rainbow. Video is available at:
Since I haven't had much luck lately with streamers, I spent almost the whole day throwing a double nymph combination (size 16 Pheasant Tail, size 20 Copper John) under an indicator and split shot. Action was OK, not as good as last time. I got three fish to the boat and lost four or five others before I could reach them with the net. For a while there were quite a few midges flitting about. Every now and then I'd see a mayfly or caddis. A few trout were eating something either on or just under the surface. Could have been dead midges on the surface or some kind of emerger. I did one long drift with dry flies: a hopper and a light Cahill, which resembled the mayflies I was seeing. My dry fly casting isn't the greatest but because I was in a boat drifting at the exact speed of the current, once my flies plopped down on the surface they ought to have looked pretty natural. I got a couple drifts right over the top of some fish that had surfaced a few seconds earlier. But nothing came up for my flies. Since the nymphs were working, more or less, I went back to them late in the day, when I caught a small brown trout and a bigger rainbow. Video is available at:
http://youtu.be/vZ3H-pxWEDw
Friday, July 18, 2014
Nice weather, nice fish
Since we've been back in Kentucky I've been fishing the Cumberland River tailwater in southern Kentucky for trout every week or two from my Gheenoe.
Yesterday was a beautiful day weatherwise -- partly cloudy, low humidity, no wind, temperature in the 70s. This is pretty rare in Kentucky in July. I'm glad I was able to take advantage of it.
It's a long haul from where I live to where I put in on the river. It's a two and a half hour drive; then time spent packing up the Gheenoe and dunking it off the boat ramp; finally a 30 minute drive upriver to the spot where I start fishing. It wasn't until after noon yesterday that I took my first cast.
I started off throwing a streamer toward the vertical bank that I believe I showed in the video accompanying my previous post. I had one bite in that first drift but the fish came off. I switched flies to a San Juan Worm, which flutters a bit in the water and which I thought might look like a caterpillar to the trout, and then motored back upstream to drift over the same water with this different fly. Well, the fish either didn't care for the San Juan Worm or were too deep in the water column to see it. The flow in the river was still pretty strong at this point.
After this second drift I switched to a different rod and a different technique. I tried a double nymph combination (a size 16 Hare's Ear and a size 20 Copper John) under a split shot and a neon orange strike indicator. I drifted a different section of the river and hooked three trout on the nymph rig. All of them broke off. The hook on the Hare's Ear seemed sharp to me but I know that fly has been in my nymph box for quite a while, so maybe it wasn't as sharp as it needed to be. I then put on a Pheasant Tail nymph fly of a more recent vintage. I caught the first trout I hooked and several more thereafter, either on the PT or the smaller Copper John.
By this point in the afternoon it was around three o'clock and the water level in the river had begun to drop and the current to slow down. I had good action from then on, until I quit around six o'clock. I hooked a bunch more fish. Some broke off, some I managed to get all the way to the boat.
Most of the fish I'm catching in the Cumberland this year are good size, between 15 and 20 inches. In earlier years, the average Cumberland trout was between 8-10 inches. I don't know this for a fact, but it may be that the folks at the trout hatchery just below the dam have been holding fish back and allowing them to grow a bit as we all waited for work on Wolf Creek Dam to be completed and the river below it to return to normal. So I'm thinking I'm catching hatchery fish recently stocked, rather than holdover fish from previous years that have grown up. If anyone reading this knows what's up with this, please leave a comment. In any case, the Cumberland is really fishing well right now, but you need to be there in low water levels. Check the generation schedule on the TVA website
http://www.tva.com/river/lakeinfo/index.htm
and plan your trip accordingly.
Here's some video I shot yesterday:
http://youtu.be/t12b0ce-JtI
None of the fish I got to the boat show up in the video. By the time I got the fish into the boat, they were pretty exhausted and I didn't want to further risk their health by holding them out of the water for a video. Also, it's tougher to take video in moving water like the Cumberland than in still water, such as I fish in Florida. I need a hand on the rod and another on the trolling motor I use to control my position as the boat drifts downstream. If I want to hold a camera, I either need to set the rod down or take my hand off the TM in order to take the camera out of my shirt pocket and aim it. One of these days I'll get a camera mount, like other anglers do.
Yesterday was a beautiful day weatherwise -- partly cloudy, low humidity, no wind, temperature in the 70s. This is pretty rare in Kentucky in July. I'm glad I was able to take advantage of it.
It's a long haul from where I live to where I put in on the river. It's a two and a half hour drive; then time spent packing up the Gheenoe and dunking it off the boat ramp; finally a 30 minute drive upriver to the spot where I start fishing. It wasn't until after noon yesterday that I took my first cast.
I started off throwing a streamer toward the vertical bank that I believe I showed in the video accompanying my previous post. I had one bite in that first drift but the fish came off. I switched flies to a San Juan Worm, which flutters a bit in the water and which I thought might look like a caterpillar to the trout, and then motored back upstream to drift over the same water with this different fly. Well, the fish either didn't care for the San Juan Worm or were too deep in the water column to see it. The flow in the river was still pretty strong at this point.
After this second drift I switched to a different rod and a different technique. I tried a double nymph combination (a size 16 Hare's Ear and a size 20 Copper John) under a split shot and a neon orange strike indicator. I drifted a different section of the river and hooked three trout on the nymph rig. All of them broke off. The hook on the Hare's Ear seemed sharp to me but I know that fly has been in my nymph box for quite a while, so maybe it wasn't as sharp as it needed to be. I then put on a Pheasant Tail nymph fly of a more recent vintage. I caught the first trout I hooked and several more thereafter, either on the PT or the smaller Copper John.
By this point in the afternoon it was around three o'clock and the water level in the river had begun to drop and the current to slow down. I had good action from then on, until I quit around six o'clock. I hooked a bunch more fish. Some broke off, some I managed to get all the way to the boat.
Most of the fish I'm catching in the Cumberland this year are good size, between 15 and 20 inches. In earlier years, the average Cumberland trout was between 8-10 inches. I don't know this for a fact, but it may be that the folks at the trout hatchery just below the dam have been holding fish back and allowing them to grow a bit as we all waited for work on Wolf Creek Dam to be completed and the river below it to return to normal. So I'm thinking I'm catching hatchery fish recently stocked, rather than holdover fish from previous years that have grown up. If anyone reading this knows what's up with this, please leave a comment. In any case, the Cumberland is really fishing well right now, but you need to be there in low water levels. Check the generation schedule on the TVA website
http://www.tva.com/river/lakeinfo/index.htm
and plan your trip accordingly.
Here's some video I shot yesterday:
http://youtu.be/t12b0ce-JtI
None of the fish I got to the boat show up in the video. By the time I got the fish into the boat, they were pretty exhausted and I didn't want to further risk their health by holding them out of the water for a video. Also, it's tougher to take video in moving water like the Cumberland than in still water, such as I fish in Florida. I need a hand on the rod and another on the trolling motor I use to control my position as the boat drifts downstream. If I want to hold a camera, I either need to set the rod down or take my hand off the TM in order to take the camera out of my shirt pocket and aim it. One of these days I'll get a camera mount, like other anglers do.
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