Michael A. Sawyers
As you know, I’m gaga about spring gobbler hunting. I’m also equally head-over-cleats goofy about baseball.
Thus, during the years when our sons were playing high school and college baseball and I was coaching the diamond sport in summer leagues, I got into a routine of doing my trout fishing early and late.
By that I mean January, February and August.
I could get in several trout angling trips during the often frigid months of January and February and then start watching baseball in March. To follow the college games, of course, often meant travel, so that took up additional time.
Once spring gobbler season begins, I have blinders on. Don’t even try to show me a jar of salmon eggs or a Mickey Finn, because I’m wrapped up in slate calls and 3-inch turkey loads. Well, maybe on a Sunday if I’m not too tired from early morning owl hoots I might stick a worm on a hook, but probably not. I’ll probably be out at dawn scouting the turkey woods and listening for gobbles.
Living within sight of West Virginia (I can see Knobley Mountain from my front yard in Rawlings) is a wonderful thing when it comes to early-in-the-year trout fishing.
Within minutes (OK, it takes up to 90 of them to get to the Smoke Hole), I can be fishing for trout that have been recently stocked in the Mountain State’s streams and rivers.
During my years of trying to learn about cold water trout so that I could be watching double plays and weighing gobblers a few weeks later, I found that the meal worm was the absolute number one bait under such conditions.
Drift these little hors d'oeuvres slow and low and if there is a trout around it will likely take a look and often take a bite.
I would recommend that you don’t sit down in the river during the first two months of the year. One time when Jim Goldsworthy and I visited the Smoke Hole under such conditions Goldy plopped his netherparts into the South Branch — unintentionally, of course — and then elevated fast enough to make a NASA launch coordinator envious.
We caught trout, though.
As I write this column on Tuesday, I look at the U.S. Geological Survey stream gauge numbers from Franklin, W.Va., and see that the branch is roaring at 635 cubic feet per second. That’s a lot of water, but not nearly as much as the 1,200 cfs that was wooshing toward Petersburg a week ago today when the big rains hit.
Usually at this time of year, however, flows are low and clear. In fact, the daily median flow at Franklin for Jan. 19 is just a little more than 100 cfs, which is a Smoke Hole volume I consider to be ideal.
I wouldn’t worry too much about spooking the trout. Actually it may help if they see you and think that you are a hatchery worker getting ready to feed them.
I’ve never tried it myself, but I have been told that if you throw gravel into the stream where new hatchery trout have been stocked they think it is food being tossed at them and they begin to feed.
Fishermen are an ingenious bunch.
In any event, there is nothing like a skillet full of sizzling fresh trout to make you feel like you have started the new hunting and fishing year off in fine fashion.
Contact Outdoor Editor Mike Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.
