01/19/2018 - Bucknasty Bends

This week has been a crazy one. As I sat in my office on Thursday afternoon and salivated over the 50+ degree temperatures, I couldn't help think what Friday would bring for us on the stream. It was evident that most of our snow melted during the week of unseasonably warm temperatures. Finally, when this afternoon showed it's smiling face, I packed up my gear and headed to Spearfish Creek for a little pow-wow with the Brown Trout population. Eager as I was, I knew I had to remain laser focused if I wanted today to be a success. We're going to detail today's results along with a release of our first preliminary data set. First, we need to show you how we achieved some success on a technical stream today.

Rig Roundup - What ya usin' there, dude?

My main setup for small streams is a 3 wt rod. It's size and sensitivity give me the tools needed to cover the smaller water well, and it also keeps me out of trouble when it comes to tight areas with significant vegetation and trees behind me. In simple terms, I can fish a multi-fly rig without too many dates with a tree branch. So, we rigged up the 3 wt with a floating line and 9 foot leader (5x). From there, we ran a red squirmy worm as the lead fly. Our dropper was a French Nymph (frenchie) - tied by yours truly. That's the simple part of this. You have the tools and the flies, but how did you fare....and how did you get to your results? We'll ham it up with you below.

Havin' any luck? - Method for Success

I hate that question. I absolutely hate it. I mentioned in another post that fly fishing really is NOT about luck. It's about combining science (biology), technique, and data to create a winning combination for catching fish on a consistent basis. To be clear, we're not going out there blind! When I approached the creek today, I gave it a 2 minute check to look at  water flows, clarity, and any floaties from the snow that melted. Remember this, foam is home. Structure is king. Use that information. If something looks fishy to you, it probably is. At any rate, water was off color from the melt today. So, I knew I had a bit of an advantage and didn't have to keep such a low profile. The water was a little higher, too. I upped the size of my dropper a touch because, again, I could get away with it. As far as methods are concerned, today was a combination of dead drifting and high-sticking. Both can be deadly techniques when fishing for Browns in the Black Hills.

Double Digits - Lines were TIGHT
I was on the water for approximately 2 and a half hours today. In that time, I successfully netted 10 fish. There were also multiple fish that struck or simply didn't make it into the basket.  Gonna break it down for you, that's a fish every 15 minutes. And we're not even taking into account walking time and time to re-rig or untangle. So, today was extremely productive. It's likely the productivity was influenced by a number of factors. The water was a bit warmer today at 40 degrees. Additionally, the warm air temperatures and occasional cloud cover helped produce small hatches on the surface of the water. This tells you a couple things. First, since the water is a bit warmer, the fish will likely be more active. The bugs fluttering on the film let's us know that, hey, I can probably fish an emerger higher in the water column and get some of those hungry cats in high places. Most of my success was on my dropper. That being said, today was a good, productive day on the water. A good number of fish caught, the same amount are still swimming.

THE DATA - THE DATA - THE DATA

I'm a nerd, and I don't care. My nerdiness, in this respect, helps me out a TON. Since graduate school, I've been crunching numbers in one form or another. They're not a mystery to me, and they form insightful patterns as you'll see in the data set below. I'll summarize a few things for you before displaying the charts.

Keep in mind, the chart below is in dashboard format. There are 3 separate charts that make up this dashboard. Each presents key information to help us arrive at conclusions of our own.
We took a look at number of fish caught by water temperature. As the water increased in temperature, more fish were caught. This is not surprising. When the temperature rises, the fish become more active.

Also, we looked fish by fly and area. Different areas, the fish ordered some slightly different things from the chef's menu. And some areas were much more productive than others. I'll have to take into account how much time I spent at each hole/run. The holes and runs with large numbers of fish caught - I didn't spend a good deal of time at these. I cleaned up and left.
Last, let's look at what we're serving up to the fish. Squirmies and Frenchies are king in these areas. They generate more productivity than many flies I've used in the past few months (even when matching the hatch). The key to these is that they're versatile impersonators. They mimic a food source that nearly always exists in a trout stream, and the frenchie can disguise itself as many forms of  aquatic invertebrates.

Enough talk, the data are available in the link below.

Keep 'em wet,
MB