Since the Caney is suffering a little this spring, I've decided to spend a little time on some alternative water until the conditions settle down and the Caney returns to better form.
This weekend I hit some spring creeks. On Saturday, I drove up to the Plateau to hit Charles and Mountain Creeks, which are a couple of my favorites. Usually these creeks fish REALLY well this time of year, and my expectations were high. Unfortunately, it was a letdown.
I started on Charles, in an area a few miles away from a stocking site, in a place which has held some big holdovers in the past. I expected the cool, wet summer last year might mean there were some big fish in there. If there were, I didn't find them. I caught about a million shiners and chubs, but no trout.
After working my way upstream a couple miles, I ran into a local who informed me that the closest stocking site hadn't been stocked this year, and he wasn't sure if it was stocked last year, either. He indicated that a different site had been stocked, and since the creek where I was at was pretty barren, I went to check it out. There were several people clustered around the stocking site and all were catching lots of fish, but the trout seemed clustered near the bridge and hadn't moved far. A few pools on either side of the bridge upstream and downstream were packed with trout for the taking, but once you got beyond that there were very few fish. This was rather unusual - typically, the trout on Charles seem to spread out from the stocking site fairly quickly, but these were all still clustered together a few weeks after the last stocking. This wasn't really my cup of tea - it would be great with kids or to fill a quick stringer, but standing in the middle of a crowd and "shooting fish in a barrel" wasn't what I came to do.
Therefore I moved over to Mountain Creek. I fished an area near 56, once again looking for holdovers rather than freshly stocked fish. It was very slow as well. I saw one possible holdover fish of approx. 18" (unconfirmed - may have been a big white sucker because I didn't get a good look), but he saw me first and took off for parts unknown at high speed.
Sunday presented me a few more afternoon hours to fish, and since the Plateau streams were slow, I drove up to Trammel Fork in Kentucky. It was fishing much better, with several fish to hand, though all were recent stockers. I saw one brown that was probably 2 pounds or better, but Trammel is a pretty tiny creek and the holdover browns there can be nearly impossible to approach without being spotted. Today was no exception. Regardless, there were good numbers of fish, they were spread out, and the creek is fishing really well now. Near dark, a big hatch of some mayfly I didn't recognize began, and the fish began keying on those and ignoring my imitations, so the day ended on a tough note, but I'll get there earlier and bring some better emerger patterns for the twilight bite next time. I had to think long and hard about getting a Kentucky license this year, since the Cumberland is pretty much out of commission, but it looks like Trammel may have made it worthwhile - I think I'll be doing my trout fishing across the state line for a little while until conditions improve.
bd
