New Creek Exploration

Last weekend, by pure luck, I stumbled upon a new (to me) small stream close to home that looked worthy of some fishing attention.  The general area of this stream I have frequented, but I had disregarded the new water because of the way it appears on Google Maps.  Compared to the stream I fish regularly, this flow looked tiny.  In person it was anything but tiny.  Unfortunately I was/am running out of small stream time so I had to make it happen soon.  Small streams near me seem to shut down early in the fall.  In the least, the bite gets markedly slower.  The clock was ticking so I made a go at the flow on Saturday morning.  Entry to this creek is pretty unique.  The hiking trail will take you there in a shade under half a mile, but the trail passes through one of the local abandoned train tunnels. 

I arrived at the water and found it to be in excellent condition.  The water was flowing slower than I had seen it a week earlier on the family hike, and also had much better water clarity.  For a small stream, it appeared to have the potential for some decent sized fish.  The stream had many large, deep holes with wood cover connected by shallower runs.

Worries of a skunking were quickly wiped away at the first stop of the morning.  I connected on a pretty average spotted bass with the Murdich Jig Minnow, and picked up some rock bass and longear sunfish on smaller offerings.

I slowly worked my way upstream, picking off several fish on the way.  The majority of the catch would be rock bass and longears, with a few spotted bass sprinkled in.  The largest bass I saw on the trip, of course, saw me before I saw the bass.  I was working hard to move as gently as possible along a tight shoreline by a deep hole, but my ninja skills were poor and the bass pegged me.  A few casts towards it did nothing to entice a strike.  The HD Craw in size 10, the smallest I have tied the pattern, caught a lot of fish on the day.

Longear sunfish are easily my favorite panfish to catch.  They are never the largest fish to be caught, but what they lack in size they more than make up for in beauty.  This creek had some colorful gems.  

The most surprising fish of the day ended up being my new personal best rock bass.  My day was coming to an end earlier than I had hoped due to a splitting headache, and this fish was caught in the second-to-last large pool that I fished.  Of course it pounced on the Murdich Jig Minnow and had me thinking it was a spotted bass.  For a rock bass, it had a great paddle. 

I closed out the day with the best bass of the day, yet another Jig Minnow victim.  No matter where I have fished this pattern, it has not failed to produce.

A product that is new to me this season that has been extremely handy for trips like this is the Tacky Tube.  To be perfectly honest, when I saw it for the first time, I thought it was an odd product.  The more I thought about it, the more sense it made as a small "working box" to keep small streamers handy and accessible on outings like this.  I can quickly load it with a variety of flies I expect to use and have them easily reached at all times.  

With the days getting shorter and the nights getting cooler, I am not sure if I will make it back to this stream before next year.  As it always goes with wade trips like this, after rechecking the maps when I returned home I saw that I had barely covered any water.  On a short outing to new water, I could not have asked for much more.  I'll definitely be returning next year and hope for more success.