Oaks Creek Report

JBP and I decided to scout some new water tonight and headed to Oaks Creek up near Fly Creek, NY a little outside of Cooperstown. It's a smaller stream that runs from Canadarago Lake down through Fly Creek and eventually into the Susquehanna River below Cooperstown. Rumor has it there is a decent population of wild brown trout and native brookies and given that much of it remains wild, it definitely doesn't get much fishing pressure.

JBP being a raging extrovert, we quickly found ourselves parked in some nice folks' driveway walking through their backyard along some beautiful waterfront in and around a favorite local swimming hole. Oaks Creek itself was picturesque, the perfect image of a wild trout stream. It was large enough that I didn't feel over-gunned with my 9 ft 5 weight, especially in the many holes scattered about, but I could easily see a Tenkara enthusiast having a field-day in there.

It being August, the water was a bit warm for trout so I can't attest to the veracity of the aforementioned rumors. However, I did catch a good half-dozen small-mouths (the largest around 10 inches) and more river chubs than you can shake a stick at.  Again, the Iso Comparadun was my go-to top water fly and it drew strikes despite there being little to no surface activity. As the shadows grew longer, I switched to an olive woolly bugger with a red tail and it too caught plenty of fish.

Oak Creek Report

I decided to scout out some new water on my day off so I headed west of Cooperstown to Oak Creek, the stream the flows out of Canadarago Lake. I started my search near Cattown, but I couldn't find a decent way to access the water there so my journey took me upstream to the town of Schuyler Lake where I found a bridge near a small dam.

A rather nice local gentlemen who was putting his canoe in the water informed me that from that dam the quiet water extended all the way up through the forest to Canadarago Lake proper and, from what I gather, is an amazing warm water fishery accessible almost exclusively by floating.

Well, I had been planning on trout fishing, but the water near the bridge looked promising so I gave it a go. I'm not going to bother much with fly selection here because the small mouths and perch hit pretty much everything I threw at them sub-surface and even a misshapen Henry's Fork Hopper on top. Streamer, bugger, nymph, crayfish all landed fish and an olive and black wooly bugger even drew a huge largemouth out of hiding to follow it all the way in to shore. It didn't take the offering, but it was certainly enough to get my heart pounding when that behemoth emerged from the shadows.