Small creeks

The thing about small creek exploring is ya just don't know what to expect, sometimes it's smaller than anticipated.
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Big time gotta get the Curtis Creek Sneak on.....Elbows, knees and toes...face right there next to the water, slow.
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Shoot that bow and arrow shot up the slot and game on baby. Hey, wrong way. Took me all the way up through the pool.
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Kept an eye out for bigfoot while eating snacks.
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Heaven.
 
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What a wonderful coincidence I saw this thread when I logged in, because I did my first blue lining trip of the summer. Before heading down to the river a couple in a camper van pulled by and told us they’d caught a nice 20 inches with a Chubby Chernobyl, I was quite excited to get down to the water.

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Made our way to this beautiful trib, starting up high we immediately found some promising water. I started off throwing a beadhead stonefly nymph under a strike indicator.

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This pool in particular shocked me with the lack of fish.

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Cracked open a rock and found some caddis larvae. I should’ve switched to a better imitation than my stone but that was the best I had, especially size wise. I tried a parachute Adam’s a little bit but struggled to get a good drift, the fly kept drowning.

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Ended the day with no fish, but my buddy’s gf had a nice bow follow her lure. A little disappointing, but I suppose that’s a lot of west side trout fishing. Will be giving this stream another try later in the summer!
 

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Small creeks are my favorite! If no one has heard of it, it's a good candidate. Not finding any references of the creek for fishing or anything else on the internet is a good sign. Having to hike in is a bonus. Extra points if it's in a wilderness area. Challenging terrain is welcome. I like a relatively high gradient stream with lots of pocket water. Some i have fished don't even appear to have names. Some are hidden in plain sight. Always a challenge. Always an adventure. Usually always find fish. 1000003947.jpg1000003639.jpg1000003930.jpg
 
Way too bright and hot to beach fish, plus it hasn’t been great for me so broke out the light rod and headed out to a place I’ve never fished before. I haven’t fished moving water in at least five years. Access on this stream wasn’t great. I stopped at one house to ask for permission and totally got stuffed by the wife. Quote “we don’t want people on our property”. Fair enough! The husband was a really nice fellow.
I ended up with a number of cutts to hand. I lost the two biggest ones I hooked on jumps. They were maybe 12”, though this stream looked to have potential for bigger specimens.
I ended up catching fish on six flies. The only reason I changed flies is because I kept losing them to vegetation. 😂 A shorter rod would have been handy.
I saw a jar lying on the bottom. I picked it up to see if it was old and found I was disturbing its occupant. There are also some big mussels in this creek.
Overall a nice day. A bit too warm for my liking but with a sun hoodie it was ok. This was also the first time wet wading with tights and shorts versus the long quick drying pants I usually wear. Very comfortable and I’ll be doing that again on future creek trips when wet wading.
A few pics from today.
SF

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Squatchin said:
I also wanted to add, that dang it I love a DT line for this stuff. I have a "creek" line that's basically a shorter WF line. However, the the DT just is the - and I hesitate to use the phrase- GOAT for small streams. Glad I dug mine out of the line box and slapped it on a reel again.
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Agreed, DT on my 4 weight. Just picked up an 8’6” four Thomas and Thomas LPSII that I’m told rocks a Wulff Triangle Taper so have to try one.
 
IMG_7659.jpegPretty fun opening day
The creek must of had some crazy flows last winter as things moved around a bit including a clump of massive firs fell on one of the best holes. Oh well conservation water!
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Goby?

Hope y’all have a good early season
Cheers
 
RRSmith said:
Outstanding! The puked out fish looks like a sculpin - maybe a riffle sculpin?
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That makes sense
I caught a sculpin close to that spot
It looked like a salty sculpin but I haven’t seen many in the creeks
Do they ever come up? That spot is about 1 and 1/2 miles up from the bay
 
rotato said:
That makes sense
I caught a sculpin close to that spot
It looked like a salty sculpin but I haven’t seen many in the creeks
Do they ever come up? That spot is about 1 and 1/2 miles up from the bay
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There are at least a couple of species of sculpin found in Oregon that live entirely in freshwater.
 
Down small creeks im PUTTING LINE!!. i'm SETTING UP to utterly embarrass the competition. In tbese "tributary streams". Im in these Tributary Streams!!!!!!! Look im putting back BIG LIMIT DAYS and many FULL BUCKET DAYS out up said tributary streams. I know The Deal!!!!!!! Let the parking lot know: you're dealin with ME!!!!!!!!
 
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