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I couldn’t resist an invitation to fish Oatka Creek on Halloween with two friends (Dave and Will).  The moderate forecast, fall colors, good company and a chance to throw some streamers on a sink tip encouraged my enthusiasm.  We split up, each covering a different section of the creek.  I initially struck out w/ an olive zonker and a bronze bugger in the first few promising spots.  When I arrived at a large deep pool, I switched to a dark brown bugger.  Within a few long casts, I hooked a 14″ brown.  Nice colors and a scrappy fight.  I took two more browns from this pool, all swinging/jerk stripping across current.  Moving downstream, I missed two more fish and landed another brown.

The angling highlight was hooking a monster brown against a downed log.  Watching the flash, the head turn, the roll and the sheer size of an unexpectedly large brown was a true Halloween Treat.  After a head roll, and lazy body shake, the hook pulled.  I’m  now convinced there is at least one 2′ meat eating brown in Oatka Creek.  Losing that fish has haunted me all day!  My buddies also managed to find  a few trout nymphing.  All in all a pleasant day on a gem of a trout stream.

My father-in-law and I had grand plans to take Friday off and travel to West Canada Creek in Central NY.  We were looking forward to fishing this Adirondack creek.  Our plan was to fish some Pumpkin Caddis and do some nymphing for some of the larger Browns that are know to be in that fishery.  By mid-week it was obvious that the rain was making West Canada unfishable.  The water levels were just too high to fish it safely.

As a back up we decided to make our way over to the Oatka.  All the years I have been fishing the Oatka I have never fished it in October.  In Western NY, this time of year, we are usually scoping out Lake Ontario and Lake Erie tribs for salmon and steelhead.  When we got to the Oatka we found the creek all to ourselves and a strong blue wing olive hatch coming off.  They were about a size 18 and hatched for several hours.  Most of the fish pushed off into deeper holes and when we finally found a hole it had several 12″ plus browns feeding on the surface.  We had several hookups but only landed the one pictured below.  It was a bit wet and chilly but fishing the Oatka in October will definitely be something I will do again.