May 3, 2018 – The Triple Double – Wissahickon Creek

Some of the fish that have been in since late March are looking beautiful and fight really hard.

The beauty of my job sometimes is that with 80+ students, there is usually some work to do whenever I get up.  I had to be online for a couple meetings this morning, so I figured today might be off the table for fishing, but with the summer heat in May (it reached 90 today), I didn’t sleep all that well (perhaps my sunburned forearms contributed too) so I was up by 5:30 AM and reading papers and drinking coffee before 6 AM.  By 11:30 AM, I had caught up on grading and had taken my meetings, so I decided to suit up, grab my 9 footer, and try a pair of deep holes on the Wissy to see who was home.  I left the longer rod in the garage, figuring some waist deep wading with a shorter rod would be a welcomed reprieve from the heat today, but I still rigged up to Czech nymph a pair of beadheads, the old reliable copper john with a pheasant tail tied on a dropper tag above it.

Doubled up on the incorrigible RBs.

For the third time this spring, I caught a double on a tandem nymph rig, this time a pair of rock bass.  I also caught my first little smallmouth bass of the year (and saw a couple larger ones jockeying or playing grab-ass in a deep hole on my walk out), along with more sunfish.  Before that, however, or during that, more precisely, I also landed 7 trout and dropped a couple others after short battles.  There were dogs off-leash everywhere, but by using my legs, I got away from the nonsense in the park.  I still wince when I see what these scofflaws’ pets do to the banks of the creek as they repeatedly enter the water and come out dripping wet, tearing up what little riparian buffer remains in some spots.  It’s a losing battle, but I wish folks would stay in the places where historically everyone looks the other way about breaking this particular law.  Instead, they seem hell-bent to find a new swimming hole for Fido each year and think because they love their mutts that I too should love them (and trust them off leash).  Moving on…

A pretty sight (and a bit of sighter in the frame too).

New trees have fallen into the creek down where I ended my trip with Ron a few weeks ago, and the water is getting lower and clearer away from the deep holes and plunge pools.  I was more curious than worried about water temperature but, apparently, I should also have been worried.  I clipped my stream thermometer on my boot laces for a good 10 minutes while I fished a second deep hole with an indicator and found 67 degrees at 2 PM.  I hope the rain coming this weekend brings back lower air temps, or at least cooler nights, for a little while longer.  The problem with high temps this early in the year is that there is no shade during the day yet!  Most of the creek is exposed to direct sunlight all day long still, although the leaves are coming.  I believe there is or was one more stocking slated for the creek, but they won’t last long in 70 degree waters.  Like yesterday, conditions were far from perfect, with high temperatures and strong south wind at times, but I was happy (minus the swimming dogs) to put together a respectable couple of hours of fishing on a day I thought was not going to be a fishing day at all.

Another one colored up nicely with better fins already.