|
It had been a slow start
to the season, cold and wet. I had spent a lot of time
shivering thigh deep in water hovering in the low 40’s. It
was past mid May and I hadn’t touched a trout or a salmon
yet. My friend Bruce had come over to the camp at Rangeley,
Maine to fish for three days.
Late in the afternoon we
headed to a long, deep pool that had been very good to me
early in previous seasons. On my second drift with a green
caddis larva pattern I hooked up with something real heavy
that wasn’t the bottom. Alright, finally into a fish and a
very big one at that! When I got it close enough for a look,
the disappointment was almost too much to take: a sucker of
over 20”. Not five minutes later, Bruce repeated the
performance.
Then the light bulb went
off. Suckers are spring spawners. Brook trout eat sucker
spawn (or so I had heard). Not too seriously, I had fooled
around with three different egg patterns over the winter. In
my mind I had always associated fishing spawn with Alaska
rather than Maine. I switched my small go-to green caddis
larva for one of the eggs. Before dark I had hooked and
landed four big, fat brookies, Bruce two. On the drive back
to camp we were so psyched. Maybe we were onto something?
The next two days proved
nothing short of phenomenal. One morning turned into by far
the best day of fishing either one of us had ever
experienced. We quit at 11:30, not because the fishing had
slowed, but because it had been just so good it seemed time
to give it a rest. We had landed thirty two fish, half a
dozen or more had broken us off. Six were salmon between 18
and 20 inches, the rest brook trout, none of which were less
than 16 inches. A few of the trout were pushing 20 inches
and four pounds. The takes were not the subtle takes often
associated with nymphing. Sometimes the indicator
actually jumped a foot upstream! With these strong, big
shouldered fish that could rip off line with ease, smooth
drags were a must. We fished areas where the suckers were so
thick that you hooked three or four of them to every trout
or salmon. Several of the trout disgorged real eggs upon
release, which gave us a good look at the color,
predominately creamy with a tinge of yellow and/or pink. The
half a dozen of each pattern I had tied lasted just long
enough to get us through the weekend. All I tied for the
following week were eggs. Though the fishing didn’t continue
at that pace, the eggs worked like a charm over the next two
and a half to three weeks. I gained a whole new respect for
a species I had previously thought of trash, suckers. No
longer would I be tempted to turn them into bank feeders!
- Bob
Erickson
|
Selected
Sucker Spawn Samples: |
|
Photos by Peter Frailey
|
Each Recipe
Uses the Following:
Hook: TMC #2487, size 16
Thread: Uni-Thread, size 8/0
Bead: Glass pearl (pictures 1, 2, and 5)
Body: Sparkle dubbing, polar bear color
Overbody: Sparkle yarn (pictures 1-4) |
|
|
