When I get it in my head that I want to accomplish something, good luck trying to stop me. I’ve wanted to catch a western New York giant lake-run brown trout on a fly rod for a couple of months now. From all the reading I’ve been doing online, November has looked like the best month to make it happen. And the location that has looked the most promising is one of the Lake Ontario tributaries in Orleans County, New York. I’m talking Sandy Creek, Johnson Creek, Marsh Creek, and the famous Oak Orchard River. I’d never been to the “Oak” before and so on Friday I got up early and made the trek to Albion, New York. Instead of going straight to the river, I decided to stop at a local tackle shop to talk and try and get any intel I could on what was happening and what I could do to increase my chances of landing a giant brown. I arrived at Oak Orchard Tackle & Lodge (Orleans Outdoors) around 6:30am.
Read moreHere’s To Fly Fishing, Fall Trout, And Another Six Months
This past weekend was the six month anniversary of the Wooly Bugged blog. It is incredible how fast six months can go by. I was reading over some of my posts and watching videos from the spring of 2016 and it felt like a lifetime ago. A lot of great memories captured online for as long as the internet will exist, or in the case of my blog, as long as I pay my website hosting bill. The idea for Wooly Bugged started back in May of this year after I decided to take a trip to the Yellow Creek Trout Club to christen my Orvis Recon. I caught more fish than I could count on that trip and I haven’t had bad luck on the Recon since. It seemed fitting to celebrate my six month Wooly Bugged anniversary by taking a day trip back to the Yellow Creek Trout Club.
Read moreGUEST POST: Fall Trout On The Tulpehocken
On Sunday, my brother and I wanted to take the boat out one last time before it needed to be winterized. The Susquehanna River had risen about three feet over the past week or so and looked like chocolate milk with who knows what being washed from its banks. We decided to try Blue Marsh Lake since it would be a lot safer and close to one of our favorite creeks, the Tulpehocken (“Tully”).
Read moreGoing To Combat For Lake-Run Brown Trout
One fish that has eluded me on the fly rod is the Great Lakes brown trout. Both New York and Pennsylvania now have thriving Great Lakes brown trout stocking programs. The program in New York is more mature and in late October, these brown trout that commonly grow to 30” and larger come into the Lake Ontario tributaries to spawn. Last week I was doing some research on where I’d have the best shot at catching one of these giants and the two bodies of water that kept coming up in my research were both located in western New York, the Oak Orchard and 18 Mile Creeks. I found a video on YouTube that was posted in 2015 by Holsinger’s Fly Shop, and in it, they discuss the great run of lake-run brown trout, steelhead, and salmon that comes up the 18 Mile Creek through Newfane, New York. After watching several other videos, I decided I had to head to Newfane to see if I could hook-up with one of these brown trout.
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