Freeze Thaw

A small weenus eddy

We’ve had 97” of snow so far this year. It started in November and pounded us until just before Christmas when it warmed up, rained, and nearly all of it melted. It wasn’t warm for long and the flows on the river weren’t right and of course there’s so much holiday stuff going on that it wasn’t much of a fishing window for me. On the Saturday before Christmas we were at The Swamp and we got some wings, as you do, and I ordered them and Travis yelled to me at the last second: “Get ranch!”

I asked the friendly but surly bartender for ranch and she said, in a tone dripping with disgust, “Ranch? Oh he from Ohio.” Travis was born and raised in Corning NY and lived for quite a while in Buffalo, actually.

The weather turned cold a few days before New Year’s and it started snowing and it kept snowing for about a week until, once again, it warmed up, rained, and nearly all the snow melted. But this time the flows cooperated, that ramp was clear, and there was minimal ice at the put-in, so Paul and I were able to sneak out for what looked to be an ideal morning on the river.

The skies were textured steel gray, layers upon layers of thin clouds jockeying for position as they moved high overhead, jagged electric white fissures opened and closed on the thin edges of the clouds where only a few were stacked on one another. The winds were gusty but generally light at the level of the river, blowing oddly from the south south east dawdling randomly before swinging around hard from the west and blowing fiercely, steadily over 30mph as a front moved through and brought rain then ice then snow and cold weather again. We pulled the boat out just as the wind and rain started around 1pm.

The level was perfect, just under 6,000cfs, and it had been steady for several days. The water was dirty, that dusty tan and green color from which fish can mysteriously emerge just behind your fly next to the boat. It probably indicated they were pulling at least some water from the upper gates at the dam. Paul fished me through the entire first side channel where he had moved a nice fish two days earlier. I put a tan and gold Sasquatch everywhere there should have been a fish but there was nothing.

So I jumped on the oars and took the backdoor to Hog Island and Paul threw a fairly large articulated chartreuse and white streamer. About two minutes into fishing we came to the first great looking water in this stretch where the small channel cuts a fifty degree elbow to river left against some big boulders and a small log jam and picks up speed below a small weenus eddy. Paul landed his fly at the apex of the direction change, the crotch of the log and the boulder where there is the tiniest eddy and he stripped twice and there was a golden flash and he said calmly - “On.”

The fish hung just below the surface, nose straight up and tail straight down, then articulated it’s whole body seemingly in slow motion back and forth and back and forth trying to throw the hook as it calmly rode the current downstream. It was hanging in the current then death rolling seventy or eighty feet below the boat and I looked back and Paul’s line was wrapped around the butt of his reel and he was struggling to free it and I yelled “Just strip! Rod tip down!”

Paul looked up calmly while he continued to free his line and said, “Easy coach, I got this.”

As the fish came into view next to the boat I said, “It’s fucking big dude! That might be a mega!” In Paul’s brown trout hierarchy “megas” are anything over 24 inches long. We’ve caught quite a few two footers over the years on this river on the fly but never a measured mega. We’ve caught a few megas on the devil’s tackle, sure, and we’ve seen pictures of a few megas caught on the fly, but this was our first.

This fish measured 25 ½ “ long and I think it would have scratched 26” if we had taken our time and pinched the tail. It was a big buck with a big head and a big mouth and big shoulders. It wasn’t particularly fat or tall but it certainly wasn’t skinny, either. While this river doesn’t grow the biggest brown trout in the world and it’s not great for numbers, we’ve seen pictures of a few browns pushing 30” here and one day it’s going to happen for us on the fly. We just need to keep fishing.

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