Jack blue and Jill Meuninck (Jack's sister)

Worming the Nymph

“Worming the Nymph’ remains the most successful trout hooking combination I have ever used and I have used it everywhere: in at least fifty lakes, rivers and streams from Michigan to Seattle . I want to share this technique, but first let’s push back through the eye of time to that day I wrangled my Brother-in-law, Jack Blue, to Volinia Creek.

Jack, a slow-walking, slow-talking, laid-back kind of guy, thinks hitching his pants is aerobic exercise. Given his pensive manners and judicious approach to life, and my spontaneous excesses, we have a bi-polar kind of kinship. He talks slow and intelligently putting people at ease. My jaw rattles peppery phrases and incomplete sentences, putting people on guard. There are bigger differences too: Jack spins worms; I flip flies. He can sit and fish for hours; I would rather walk. I’m hot; he’s cold. He is the Yin fisher and I am the Yang angler. So when I proposed we grab a couple fly rods and patrol Volinia Creek for trout, Jack thought different. He needed convincing.

Volinia Creek spills through Volinia , Michigan, corkscrewing through woods and farm fields toward Dowagiac where it feeds into the river of the same name. The creek’s upper reaches flow crisp and clear, rippling gently over a gravel bottom demarcated on the north by Fred Russ Forest and the south by Newton ’s Woods.

Every Spring, the DNR dumps a few hundred Browns and Rainbows from the old, narrow concrete bridge that borders the north edge of the park. Generously stocked, this friendly and forgiving fishing hole draws novice and pro fly casters: fish are hungry, naïve and plentiful. Even so it took a couple beers and a perverse tale of monstrous Rainbows to lure Jack from the boat to the stream.

A generous April shower saturated the ground with a dazzling display of Dwarf Ginseng, Wild Leeks, Liverwort, Trout Lilies and Spring beauties. Numerous trails crisscrossing the park showed muddy evidence of exploring walkers, gawkers, birders and equestrians. To successfully stalk trophy trout, we arrived early before young lovers sitting atop stallions started pitching Daisy petals to starving fish.

Our prowl began atop the concrete bridge where the largest and most wary trout hide in the shadows of Marcellus highway, a two lane blacktop that locals use as an Indianapolis Motor Speedway surrogate. Survival oriented anglers beware: hook a fish, step backwards, and you are road kill.

Jack took several fruitless casts with his spinning rod, stuck his tongue in cheek and repeated his fishing mantra:  “Kinda shallow, kinda weedy.”  

“Wrong equipment, I countered. “You need a wormed nymph”.

I showed him my Number 16 Prince, then pinched a red-worm in half, and hooked it to the nymph. “Trout cannot resist a wormed Prince. And just as tantalizing is a half inch length of red felt cut to resemble a larval casing. I have used Mousies too, even a piece of rubber worm.”

Jack pinched a pea of split shot about twelve inches above the wormed Prince, and his rod went “pffushhh!”

“Bounce it across the stream,” I said. “Use your rod tip, make it hop from right to left, then let it drift downstream  a few feet and bounce it back to the other side.”

“Shrimp on,” he hollered!

“Shrimp maybe, but a trout just the same.”

 Ten “shrimps” later (all of them laid end to end, did not measure a legal fish) and Jack, now a confirmed Prince Wormer, awakened within the trout fishing instinct all men have, the need to walk the edge of flowing water, to feel the earth tremble beneath wet feet, to see the blue sky swallow the heavens, and to address a “Wormed Prince’ above a riffle, watch it stray around the rock to a grateful fish, a hopeful and hungry monster lazing in the eddy ready to stir your imagination and curse you with nightmares.

HOW TO FISH THE PRINCE:  A Prince wormed or otherwise is effective in close quarters, where a casting is impossible. In swift water, let the lure bounce downstream in the current, stopping it now and then, retrieve a bit, then
let it drift some more.  Also, pitch it above rocks and let the current take it around the seams. It is effective below rapids and small falls, and in the flat water below the rapids. I catch fish most often on the retrieve.

DIRECTIONS:  Take M60 out east out of Cassopolis, Michigan, travel three miles to Decatur road, turn north (left) travel ten miles to Marcellus highway, turn right, Newton Home on right, one mile to bridge over Volina creek, fish there and wade the stream through the park.