Never mind the dinkers, it’s steelhead time

Weather and work finally aligned and I spent three pleasant hours on Monday, April 14, wandering Macedonia State Park in Kent. I went everywhere except the big pool at the bottom of the waterfall. Just too obvious.

The stream was stocked for the first time April 10.

I caught four rainbows and tickled two or three others, using a Dragontail Mizuchi tenkara rod. It’s a zoom rod, meaning it can be deployed at 11 feet, nine and a half feet, and a bit under eight feet. I used the longest two settings and a nine-foot furled line with two or three feet of tippet.

That might seem on the long side for a mountain brook but until the streamside vegetation springs up there is plenty of room. You could easily use your industry standard nine foot five weight fly rod without spending precious time getting hung up in the bushes.

The trout would not come up for anything on the surface. I tried. Big and bushy, small and subtle, and points in between. Pure D bupkis.All the action was on weighted nymphs and a relatively tight line.

This time of year Macedonia is a good place to practice small stream techniques with willing test subjects. When the campground opens in early May all bets are off. I suspect a lot of those fish wind up in the campers’ frying pans. Which is fine.

In addition to catching rainbows my accomplishments were all negative, but in a good way. I didn’t fall down. I didn’t break a rod. My waders didn’t leak, and my shoulder feels okay.

I did stab myself in the thumb with a Chubby Chernobyl, but because I squashed the barb on the hook it didn’t stick and it didn’t bleed much. So that’s neutral.

I repeated the process the next afternoon on the Blackberry in East Canaan. It was a little on the high side so I stuck to the easy-in, easy-out spots in and around Beckley Furnace.

Whereas the water temperature at Macedonia was a brisk 46, the Blackberry clocked in at a much friendlier 52. Friendlier for trout, that is. For a person it was still plenty cold.

Results were similar, except I broke in a 10 foot five weight rod I picked up over the winter on a whim.

Again I caught nothing but rainbows, all in the 12-14 inch range, and all on nymphs fished deep on a tight line.

Then what had been a nice sunny day turned dark, chilly and snotty. I cheesed it and returned home to the couch and the ongoing study of martial arts movies from the 1970s and 1980s.

This activity was all filed under the heading “spring training.” The regular season starts the following week, when I am traveling to Pulaski, New York, for another whack at steelhead in the Salmon River.

My confederate Gary is there this week. He sent a photo of him cradling an immense fish. His accompanying text message made it sound ho-hum.

I guess we’ll see.