My wife and I arose before daylight Saturday, full of fishing anticipation and prepared ourselves a delicious breakfast.
Nothing like the smell of frying maple flavored bacon, hot toast with butter and fresh eggs to make your mouth water.
After demolishing our meal we drove over to Smethport, parked and took the long hike to “The hole.”
After the recent heavy rains I was apprehensive about the water conditions. Sure enough, “The Hole” wasn’t much of a hole at all, rather a rushing torrent of water!
At 8 a.m. sharp we began fishing.
When half a dozen perfect casts washed through the hole at alarming speeds without a hit, my heart sank all the way down into my waders. This first day was going to be a real challenge, something I hadn’t anticipated for my wife’s sake.
After suffering through January, February and March’s brutal, subzero winter weather, it appears the weather gods, still uncooperative, conspired to continue their difficult weather and make every aspect of spring trout fishing miserable for fishermen. High water, swift currents, freezing mornings, deep mud, and flooded banks made fishing in New York state difficult April 1 and virtually impossible the first Saturday.
Well, gee, that stinks doesn’t it!
I was hoping that Pennsylvania’s weather would relent and provide more favorable fishing conditions, but the elements frowned upon us again, heavy rain raising the streams over their banks where they stayed for weeks. Trout stocked in the preseason were subjected to endless days of icy, rushing torrents of water, never a good situation for waiting anglers.
As I spoke with other fishermen during the day it rapidly became apparent few had enjoyed any luck at all. Marvin Creek, Potatoe Creek, Sugar Run and Willow Creek along with fishermen in the Warren area all experienced poor fishing. I heard of a few successful anglers in the Hamlin Lake area, but doom and gloom prevailed in every other area I checked.
Without the classic still, calm water conditions we’d hoped for, with large, clear holes with numbers of trout holding in them, easy to see and cast to, the odds of catching trout drop rapidly for the average angler.
Rushing current makes it impossible to see not only any lurking trout, but also to detect snags, rocks, sunken grass and other debris hidden under the dirty water and waiting to tangle your line. Managing to keep your bait or lure deep enough in the water column is difficult as well while keeping your bait or lure moving slowly enough to entice a hit is almost impossible. High, swift water makes every aspect of fishing increasingly more difficult.
However, one can usually discover areas of the stream where trout are holding, such as current breaks, stream side eddies and rocks or logs blocking the fastest water. Occasionally, you can coax a trout out of such waters, but not today.
Saturday not only presented fishermen with all of the obstacles mentioned above, but the real problem, to me, the biggest challenge was the scarcity of trout overall.
Since the majority of streams were stocked before the heavy rains struck, the days and weeks of high, swift water spread the fish so thin, made them so hard to locate, washed them so far downstream, they simply were not present in adequate numbers for the anglers. This combination, I believe, made for the toughest fishing I can ever remember on the first day.
So, if Saturday was a disappointment to you, don’t feel too bad, you were not alone. If you did catch trout, congratulations, you were in the right spot at the right time and must have done your homework.
Hopefully, weather and stream conditions will improve in the coming weeks and along with them the fishing.
