Twitchy

It's happening much sooner than I expected...Green going red, orange, or yellow.

The night temps dipping into the 30's.

The trout season days from over.

I've been immersed in family activities, home ownership responsibilities and meeting employment objectives.  Though I've been out lawn casting with some of my friends, learning a better way to cast a switch rod, flies have not seen water for a long time.

I returned from a week of travel that normally would have involved sneaking out after work for some East coast striper fishing.  This time, my week included training a new hire and it seemed that casting to stripers were not what my company had in mind for this guy.

I flew home on Friday night and picked up on the homefront where I left off Sunday last.

By Sunday this, I was twitchy.

It's times like these that nothing beats the slow methodical, unencumbered pace of wading a trout stream.  Sure, dropping the skiff into a river and chasing busting smallmouth would have been fun, but the trailer, motor and launch fees were added levels of distraction that I didn't need.

A 4 wt, a hip back, my waders and a camera.  It helped that I hit the stream during the first quarter of the local pro football team's Sunday afternoon match against whoever...

On the creek adjacent to a farm, the sun was high and the wind caused the browning dry corn leaves to scrape.  Hoppers in the last throes of their summer bliss scurried and inspired my fly choice.  I tied on a foam beetle because it was that time, and droppered a nymph just in case it wasn't.

The creek I waded recently had a dam removed which opened its flow directly to the larger river it fed.  After 17 years of fishing this stream I like to think that I've come to know it.  What I found today though, was a surprise.  Creek Chubs.  Lots of them.  10 years ago I probably would have cursed the shortsightedness of the folks that allowed their reintroduction into my trout fishing playground.  Today however, I was pleased.  Pleased that things are where they should be, natives returned home.  Secretly pleased that the invasive Brown Trout that I was seeking would likely get very, very fat eating them.   

I spooked some nice fish where I knew they should be but failed to entice them.  My beetle and dropper didn't move them but my wading boots eventually did. 

Eventually the dropper worked and so did the beetle.

A nice 13" brown smacked my terrestrial mid-stream and the "pop" from the surface take was so fulfilling that upon releasing that trout I noticed I was no longer twitchy.

Summer...Over

Dropper

Hopper

Native (Trout Protein)

Green to Brown