Potter County "Bonefishing"
It was a hot
day in July several years ago and I was
sweating. Fortunately, the hot sun was
angled just right and I could see the school of fish clearly. I had been slowly stalking them, ever so
carefully sliding my wading shoes along the muck bottom at the head of
a very
long pool. They were now just a short cast away. I
had done this exercise enough by now to know that one misstep
or a fumbled cast would send them shooting away. One
thing I had learned was that these fish were a lot smarter
than normally credited.
The water
they were fining in was scarcely six inches deep and they had arranged
themselves, as fish usually do, with the larger fish, at least 20
inches long,
at the head of the line. The goal was
to make but one perfect cast: drop the
specially tied, slightly weighted, # 14
nymph imitation with the marabou dressing a scant 18 inches in front of
the
lead fish, let it settle to the bottom, then twitch it slightly, just
enough so
that it appeared to be alive and wiggling.
Any unnecessary false casting might be enough to spook them, it
had to
be what we call a “punch” cast – back, then a short jab with the rod
with
enough line held loosely to shoot to the target.
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Had I spent hundreds of dollars to fly to the Florida Keys or Easter Island or the Bahamas in order to stalk these wary, spooky denizens of the flats? Was there an expensive guide standing on a skiff in the background waiting for me to rejoin him? Not at all. I was simply doing some Potter County "bonefishing,” not the exotic (and costly) stuff with the real tropical fish of the same name. |
If there is anything that the lower Allegheny has in abundance it is CARP. Hundreds, yea, thousands of carp. But how to take them on a fly rod. With no creel limit they are pursued by bowhunters, kids with 22’s, the canned corn hook and line folk, and various other methods. It is claimed that they will surface feed on the white fruit of certain stream side shrubs and I have seen it. I understand that some even tie a fly to imitate the fruit. However, for the fly fisher, this limits the season.
I’m not sure how I stumbled on my technique. I had, to be sure, caught quite a few carp in the spring on nymphs in low water riffles. Having observed their behavior in the flats of pools it occurred to me that under the right circumstances they might be induced to suck up a wiggly worm-looking nymph. I still have some of the “carp” nymphs tied to represent God only knows what worm or slug or whatever.
Is that what happened? You bet. The cast was made, he took and in five minutes or so it’s all over, you release the fish, check the damage to your gear and either move up stream to another pool or take a break and let this pool settle down for another try. And pat yourself on the back for pulling it off.
The pool in
which the episode happened is the last pool of the Allegheny River
before it
leaves Potter County. There are a lot
of holes like this on the lower part of the river.
