A few days ago I went to Unicorn Lake on the Eastern Shore for a late season pickerel trip. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and before I left home the wind was blowing close to 20mph. I had the day off and just wanted to get out of the house to take advantage of some time to myself but I wasn’t too optimistic. The first real cold front of November had swept in a few days before and I imagined that the fishing would be a little off. Because the winds were so strong I opted to leave my kayak at home and to focus on the shorelines of the lake and the spillway stream.
When I got to Unicorn Lake the winds had all but died down and most of the productive southern bank was being fished by a few other anglers. I fished the spillway stream but the water was very low and most of the fishy channels didn’t have any active fish. I worked my way down from the main spillway pool working streamers against rip-rap, undercut banks, and other structure. The best I did was a small crappie from the main spillway pool.
By the time I had fished most of the spillway stream and the northern shoreline by the boat ramp it was near 4pm. The sun was starting to set and I was starting to get a little chilly so I put on a pot of coffee. I keep a small pack loaded and ready in the closet near my front door for spontaneous trips like this. Inside it I have a simple camping stove, pots and pans, a small cutting board and fillet knife, a coffee pot with two mugs, and a kitchen bag with breading, plastic forks and spoons, a few bottles of water, and small vacuum sealed bags of coffee. Although I’m pretty bad at planning a fishing outing, I am very organized with my gear and I love packing for the occasional spontaneous trip like this. It’s easy enough to just have the bag ready and throw it in the truck when I’m loading up.
The coffee was wonderful. It’s admittedly a very Gierach-y thing to do when winter slows everything down but I enjoyed that small pot of black coffee so much that I didn’t mind that the fishing that day had been pretty lousy. With a warm cup of coffee in my hands, it didn’t t seem so foolish to have driven 90 miles to cast to fish that weren’t there. For a few seconds I was very conscious of the present, of where I was – next to a piece of water that I love with virtually no one in sight on a day when the rest of America was stuck in traffic or waiting in line at an airport.
Sipping my coffee next to the stream I could feel that it was the end of the year’s fishing season. Of course the fishing is never truly over here in the Mid-Atlantic, but the steady action of summer and fall was decidedly over and that had a formal feel to it. Three or four months from now, white and yellow perch would be running up the river that the stream beside me fed into: from Unicorn Lake the lower Unicorn Branch runs into the Chester River, which in turn flows into the Chesapeake Bay. The upper Chester can be a wonderful white perch fishery in the springtime but that was still a ways off.
Immediately ahead of me lay a few weeks of pickerel fishing before the lake froze over. I would wait for the warmer, milder winter days and cast brightly colored streamers in the same places I would fish for largemouth bass in the summertime – undercut banks on the stream, lake shorelines, fallen trees, points, and islands. The strikes would be quick and vicious, not completely unlike a bass, but the fight would be more erratic.
For the immediate future, at best we’d have a mild winter and the chain pickerel would be reasonably active through February. At worst the lakes and rivers would freeze over with the first real cold front followed by a good snow and icing. If that happened I would need to start driving much farther south – to Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks for stripers on their wintering grounds or maybe a trip to the Neuse River for spotted sea trout.
I don’t mind traveling to fish but I am impulsive by nature and enjoy the freedom of jumping in my truck and deciding where I’m going without any real planning. I think that’s what I dislike most about wintertime fishing. In the spring, summer, and fall I have a selection of species and places to fish within a 90 minute drive from home. Winter here reduces my choices significantly.
After the other anglers left I worked that bank with streamers – an olive wooly bugger and a small olive and white clouser minnow – still with no takes from any pickerel. The other anglers had caught a few small ones on minnows but for the most part, the action for them was slow too.
Maybe things might’ve been different for me if I had brought my kayak and fished the upper portion of the lake. Maybe if the other anglers hadn’t been there first I would’ve fished water that hadn’t been spooked with flies that that fish had never seen. Maybe the fish were just too deep for me to fish with the floating line on my 3 weight. Maybe my fly choices were off. Maybe I should’ve kept dredging the main spillway pool with nymphs for bluegill and sunfish.
All of these are conditions that might’ve changed things for the better, but I guess that’s just one of those instances of art imitating life. I made a decision on how and where I wanted to fish before I left home, but when I got there I saw that maybe I should’ve made another decision. In life there are instances just like that – property you should’ve held on to, stock you should’ve bought or sold, letters that you should’ve written, women you should’ve married. With those instances, like late winter pickerel fishing, it’s best to just slow down and appreciate the good things you have in front of you. Like a warm cup of coffee next to a stream that you love.
