A Tale of Two Creeks Part 4: Return to "No Tellum" Creek

The second to last week of September found me up on "No Tellum" Creek again. I left the house a bit earlier determined to hike up at least past the old guard station cabin before wetting a line. The weather had definitely cooled some in the evenings as the hills were full of color (this is before the cold front we are experiencing now which produced some snow in the high country. Think there are any hopper after a week of sub freezing temps?).



The parking lot was as full as I have ever seen it with 5 horse trailers parked helter skelter. The outfitters must be setting up camps for the oncoming hunting season. And though the trail head was packed... I didn't see any other anglers on the creek. The hike up saw multitudes of hoppers, some quite suicidal jumping pell mell into the creek. A hopper in this creek is not long for the world. The fish are watching..... waiting for an unfortunate grass hopper to be their next big meal.





I hiked up past the guard station and fished the creek up to the confluence with the North Fork of the creek. The fishing was quite good with the familiar hopper and smaller terrestrial combo being a success. This time the fish were more on the larger hopper than the smaller grumpies.

The fish in this stretch were larger than what I had experienced a couple of weeks earlier averaging 14-15 inches with a fair number of twinks, but the larger fish being more common. There was some beautiful terrain. I especially liked a stretch where the whole creek narrowed through a tight bit of canyon. Lots of good fish in that stretch inhabiting the deeper pools. I also thought that the narrows would be a good place to come with a gold pan at some point.



I fished for a number of hours catching at an incredible rate. As dusk started to approach I knew that I should probably head out before dark. Just belwo where the North Fork came in I noticed a tightly balled pod of fish sitting deep in a hole. Some of decent size. I switched to a nymph and tossed the nymph at them for about 20 minutes but didn't get any takes, nor would they rise to a dry fly. I am uncertain but can only guess that they were whitefish. I have never caught a whitefish out this creek, but it wouldn't entirely surpise me to find some pods of them in its environs.



Hiking out I saw a back packer on the "high" trail about a quarter of a mile down stream of me. By sticking to the "low" road and its various fords I was able to cut quite a distance out of the trek and beat him back to the trail head.




These creeks are an amazing resource for anglers. Especially on the fly. In the late summer and early fall the appearance of hoppers seems to make them ravenous. It is most likely the best feeding season for the resident fish of these creeks.