June 6, 2018 – A Few Good Hours Close to Home – Valley Creek

Sure are pretty, even in dirty water.

After teaching in the city last night, I got soaked walking to my car.  I guess I don’t trust the weather forecasts anymore, or I would have at least carried an umbrella, right?  Having been away from local fishing for a week, I wasn’t really dialed into the conditions, but I saw that Valley had a spike earlier in the week, and I figured it would spike again after these gully-washers, so I checked the gages in the morning.  I liked what I saw, stained but nearly back to normal flows after the evening's rains, almost identical conditions to the last time I fished the creek and had a good day nymphing.  I figured, what the heck…

Chasing caddis in the riffles for the most part.

As the gages indicated, the creek was still turbid, but there was at least a foot or more of visibility, so I decided to stick with the nymphing plan and not fish a streamer.  In fact, I resisted the urge early and by the time I thought about it again, the creek was clearing up and the sun was peeking out after a cloudy and cool morning.  Fishing the riffles and runs with two nymphs, usually a caddis of some kind or a walts worm as the anchor and then a pheasant tail variation with a pop of color on the tag up higher, I caught a bunch of fish in about 3 hours of fishing.  The largest was one of the first fish landed, maybe 12 inches and strong.  The average was the Valley average of 6 to 8 inches.  No real tiny fish today, so I didn’t catch 20 like last visit to the creek, but I landed at least 8 fish and hooked a handful more in addition to those.

A mayfly jig worked too, though...

While Czech nymphing, small fish do tend to come off because the first hook set pulls the little guys nearly out of the water, so I lost the smallest fish but kept the decent ones on long enough to net and sometimes photograph.  Even in the cloudy water, the fish are still beauties in this creek!  I only had a small window, as I teach on Wednesday night too, but I was glad I spent some later hours grading on Tuesday to allow this quick, successful outing.  I have more time on Thursday, so I may head a little further from home, perhaps the Lehigh Valley, provided it doesn’t pour again tonight, I suppose.

A few Valley-respectable fish in the mix of average ones like below.