Jon and I hit "No Tellum" creek one afternoon in early September. We fished from the parking lot up to the cabin. The parking lot was empty except for one horse trailer with a group of guys gearing up for a horse packing trip. The hoppers were everywhere and the fish were keyed on them. This trip I actually did better on the unsinkabeetle than the hoppers. The fished seemed to like the smaller terrestrial, but hit anything with legs. They really responded to the cream belly and brown backed beetle, which I think they viewed as one of the smaller hoppers.
Jon and I split up with him hiking quite a ways up above me. He forgot to bring footwear that he could immerse, so I ended fishing a bit more than he did. Which is ok, he seems to enjoy the scenery as much as anything.
There is a little spring at the cabin and a nice green meadow with a lot of shade. I keep threatening to hike the wife and boys into the meadow for a 2-3 day pack trip. I may have to wait a couple of years yet as I can't imagine packing little J (who is a right regular butterball at 1 year and around 26 lbs) and a 60 pound pack. I have tossed L on my shoulders and hit the creek a couple of times. He is approaching the point where packing him on my shoulders will no longer be an option. We hit Big Elk Creek over Labor Day and he proved that he can hike when he wants to, but will default to "daddy put me on your shoulders" whenever he deems it convenient.
Last year when we fished the same stretch I got a number of exceptionally large cutthroat for a creek this size with a couple of specimens exceeding 17 inches and one 19 inch whopper. This time nothing quite so large, though I did spook a couple of very large fish from a couple of the deep holes. The little twinkies were all over the flies. I stopped counting fish at 30..... and that was only after about an hour of a 5 hour outing. Every other cast was a strike and about every 4th cast a hookup. The large fish for this outing were in the 13-14 inch range.
Hopper fishing small creeks in the fall is truly one of my favorite times of year. Oh I must admit to some hog hunting on a couple of secret waters during runs of big fish, but the explosive takes of wild cutthroats on terrestrial in a small creek really pleases.
4 comments:
gorgeous cutts!
Thanks Mike. 2 more parts in this series with a few more fish pics.
Snuck out with my boy this afternoon for one last hopper trip before the snow starts to fall.
Picked up a few nice ones before the wind kicked every leaf in the woods into the creek.
why do you never take me to these kind of places? I'm deeply hurt ;-)
John,
I offered to take you to "No Tellum" creek but Dad didn't want to make the drive north.... remember.
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