An unusual fishing adventure

“The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommend it to me.”

—Henry David Thoreau

One of my fishing buddies, Kurt Jellett, is more in the mold of Izaak Walton than Theodore Gordon. Kurt rarely uses a fly when angling, and if he does the hook of the fly is invariably tipped with a piece of worm. Kurt mostly targets panfish or bass, which he then feeds to his cats, Molly and Tigger.

He recently drove over to Cannonsville reservoir to try for bass. While he was putting his boat in the water, he noticed an osprey soaring overhead. His normal technique when bass fishing is to use two rods, one rigged with a spinnerbait and the other with a floating, diving plug. He casts these lures out and then slowly rows along trolling the baits behind the boat. On this particular day, he had no sooner cast the floating, diving plug onto the water than the osprey reappeared. To Kurt’s amazement and dismay, the bird immediately dove to the surface and seized the plug. Kurt’s reaction was to haul back on the rod trying to yank the plug from the osprey’s grasp. This resulted in the osprey becoming hooked in one leg, just above the talons. Instead of playing a bass, Kurt found himself unexpectedly playing an angry osprey. The bird tried to fly off with the plug, but Kurt reeled quickly and caused the bird to splash into the water. This action was repeated several times with the bird attempting to fly and Kurt yanking it back down into the water. At length, he was able to boat the osprey and, wrapping a towel around one hand and forearm, he attempted to remove the hook. While thus engaged, he had to dodge the angry bird’s beak. Unfortunately, bass plugs do not come equipped with barbless hooks. After struggling for a number of minutes, Kurt finally managed to free the bird from the hook. Once free, the osprey quickly flew off, none the worse for having been hooked and released. Mr. Jellett considers himself very lucky not to have been bitten or clawed by the bird during this wrestling match. He was smiling when he asked me, “What’s the size limit on ospreys these days?”

Somehow, I doubt that this was the type of adventure Mr. Thoreau was referring to. The tangler once caught a large dragon fly while dry fly fishing, but never a feathered creature. At least not yet. While Kurt’s catch was unexpected, Barb and I have been unable to catch much of anything in our recent stream forays. No insects observed and no fish caught.

This past week, I was privileged to observe an electro-shocking survey conducted by Norm McBride and Fred Linhart of DEC region four. They were surveying Butler Brook, a small tributary of the West Branch of the Delaware. The purpose of the survey was to discover if any trout spawning was occurring in Butler Brook. As usual, simply by listening to the remarks of these two professionals, I picked up several bits of knowledge regarding the world of trout. Butler Brook flows in a generally southern direction until it meets Big Hollow Brook, and then it enters the West Branch. While no sizeable trout were found in the brook, they did turn up two fingerling Brown trout. This was a sure sign that there had been some spawning activity last fall in the tiny brook. I was chagrined to see that Big Hollow Brook had been severely bulldozed just above its junction with Butler Brook by the Broome County people. This bulldozing removed several structures put in place to improve the habitat for trout.

When the survey was completed, Mr. McBride suggested I try fishing the upper no-kill section of the West Branch. “Forget the dry fly,” said he, “show `em a big streamer.” I followed his instructions and had one hit, but failed to hook the fish. I finally did manage to catch a wee brown trout, all of nine inches long on an RS-2 emerger pattern. This fly was originated by a westerner named Rim Chung. The RS stands for Rim’s Semblance. I apologize to Norm for going against his advice, but then again, this fly was only half dry.