Re: {Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders} jig buggers on accotink stockers

You caught 22 trout on Accotink? I suddenly feel terrible about myself.

On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 2:43 PM, TurbineBlade <doublebclan@gmail.com> wrote:

To decompress from flying all over the place in those aluminum missiles I despise, I got in some "backyard" fishing on Accotink today.  I thought the slight drizzle would deter most folks, and to my eyes it seemed to deter everyone else (other than mountain bikers and a few dog walkers).  

I started near home, flipping a fly into a few pockets where I've caught trout in the past 2-3 years but didn't turn up anything.  Moving upstream, I finally hooked up with a small rainbow in another of the reliable, well-known stocker pockets closer to Wakefield.  I also observed a few trout holding near the bottom, seemingly uninterested in moving for a fly.  This is great to me -- it seemed to suggest that the trout were fairly spread out and had been "stung" enough in those spots to not be ripped out by poachers...well, at least not as easily as poachers probably prefer things.

I then moved MUCH further up near the "bridges" as Art put it.  I've caught a lot of fish up there in previous years, but only got 2 in that stretch.  Again -- there was almost no one up there, and that's the "everyone and their dog, parking lot of noise and annoyance".  I didn't feel like going further up, so I chose to try a few deeper areas that I hadn't previously fished.  One looked decent, but had high banks, overhanging limbs, and basically required a cross-shoulder roll cast.  With a lead-head jig bugger, this requires sort of 1.5-2 roll casts, as the sink rate of the fly is pretty decent.  

Anyway -- if you look at the gnarly arms reaching down (in the picture) you'll see that it's a spot most people would never even consider.  

But - I caught 6 fish in a row in that very spot.  

After that spot dried up, I moved to yet another....totally crappy fly casting spot like that one and caught another 6.  Maybe there's something to trying something different.  On the way back, another 1-2 holes had a lone fish willing to tangle with me.  Overall, it was a productive "stocker" day and the fish were really quite spread out.  

Anyway -- I ended up with 22 trout on the day, all rainbows, and all but one 14" were in the 9-12" range.  I also caught 3 really pretty creek chubs, and 2 green sunfish.  That's also a good sign!  

I caught everything on a "jig bugger", with just a marabou tail and ice dub body.  The lead-heads were some cheap Walmart ones (1/64 oz I think) we had in our spinning gear from a few years ago that I figured made the same (or more) sense as putting a tungsten bead on a hook, putting the hook into your vise, wrapping on lead wire, and then saying that "it's not a jig".  My concern that the eye would jam the hook gap and affect "hooking" was unfounded.  Those suckers hook fish as well as anything else. If anything, they seem to hold even better.   

I used a 6' leader of 30-20-10 pound mono (big game).  The 10-pound mono dia measures out to something like -1x tippet.  The fly rod is over 40 years old and made of fiberglass.  You don't need to be technical to catch fish.  ;)  

Take care folks!  It looks like this thing has been pretty active while I was in Orange County listening to how various state and federal wildlife control agencies kill mammals.  The highlight was listening to a respected ethologist (who worked with Konrad Lorenz) talk about wolves.  Guy was a rockstar.  

Gene

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