{Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders} Re: Savage River 2015-12-06

Little Ludes and Misha School of FLY FISHING in brown town!! Awesome stuff.. The Native American phrase is so sweet too btw.

On Monday, December 7, 2015 at 3:28:42 PM UTC-7, Misha Gill wrote:

Yesterday Jeremy and I were able to take advantage of the mild December weather and get out to the Savage River. I was excited to have a friend with whom to take advantage of an opportunity that had only come up on Saturday with a friend. Not everybody has next-day availability in this hectic city we live in. 

There are about 5 river miles of the tailwater section of the Savage, and I have fished most of the available water. There was one stretch, however, that I knew I still had left to try. It's visible from the road, so it's not like it's a secret. With only 5 miles of available water, I don't think you could call any stretch of the Savage a secret. Still, I'll just say the stretch we fished was lower down on the stream. 

We timed our arrival perfectly for the time of year. I picked Jeremy up at 7:15 and by 10 am we were parked by the river. The sun had just emerged from behind the ridge, and the ground frost had begun to melt. We emerged from the laurel forest at the head of a pool where two thanksgivings ago I landed an 18" male brown on a Slumpbuster. Jeremy wanted to try streamers first so I directed him to the pool, and I took the pocket water up above. This summer I learned some of the nuance associated with fishing a dry-dropper rig out on the Frying Pan river in Colorado, and I was eager to see if the tactic would be similarly effective on the Savage. Well, about five minutes after we started fishing, I brought the fish in the picture artfully captioned "IMAG2107" to hand. The fish took my Sexy Hare's Ear, which was dropped about 24" behind a tan Chernobyl Ant. Jeremy decided to switch tactics at this point, so he set up a rig similar to mine and we began to fish upstream together. 

With the sun behind us, we followed the principal of the Iroquois - Narrow Mee Ak Now Who Sunkuh Tank Shunk. My grandmother taught me this phrase, which supposedly translates to "you fish on your side of the river, and I'll fish on mine." She says it is the name of a river in Connecticut, although I am unable to find internet verification right now. I haven't looked too hard. You won't be surprised to learn that my spelling of the phrase is phonetic. 

I continued to take fish, all on the dropper. Jeremy, meanwhile, was a little shocked when a fished came up to eat his top fly, a yellow Chernobyl Ant. He missed that fish, but we were alerted to the possibility that they might eat on top. Soon enough, Jeremy was into his first Savage River brown trout. It was a beaut, nicely sized, scrappy, and wonderfully marked in spawning colors (IMAG2111). I switched to a big yellow PMX and was able to hook a fish on top as well. 

The largest fish we saw yesterday came from a difficult lie. A tree spread its branches out in a canopy over a deep but inconspicuous run about 15 feet long. I crept into a hole in the branches near to the bank, and turned my back on the lie to watch my fly line navigate the tangles. On the second backcast a nice fish took the dropper. Jeremy was able to see the fish from the other side of the river when it flashed initially. Then the fish jumped and porpoised and turned downstream. The fish came unbuttoned in the next pool, so unfortunately no picture, but I am pretty darn certain the fish was around 18 inches. I regrouped and changed out my dropper fly in favor of a sharper hook. 

In all, I think we only fished about a half a mile section of stream. We wrapped up a little after 2 pm, having satiated our catching urge. The sun was just about to disappear behind the ridge anyways, and it was about to get cold. I think I may have gleaned a bit of insight regarding the sun on this day. When it was behind us, we could see into the water and know that we were fishing to the holding lies. When it was more or less in front of us, the glare made it difficult to know what we were fishing. So if you ever go winter fishing, maybe try to find a stretch where the sun will be behind you from 10 am to 2 pm. 

--
http://www.tpfr.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tidal-potomac-fly-rodders+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to tidal-potomac-fly-rodders@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tidal-potomac-fly-rodders/365f65cf-9185-4369-bbd3-49e39cf38108%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.