September 4, 2020 – Four Hours of Silly Early September Fishing – Northampton County Limestoner

A piggy but likely put here years ago?

The short losing streak ended today with a good day of nymphing following some overnight storms in the Lehigh Valley.  I got up early and checked Valley, but nothing had happened, so I searched a couple other creeks that had spikes on the USGS gauges last night, and one of them even had a second spike.  This slightly farther creek holds the water a little longer after the rain, so I headed that direction but stopped at another creek along the way that does not have a gauge.  I was secretly hoping to save the other creek for Saturday or Sunday.  Even in the predawn hours of 6:10 AM or so, I could tell I needn’t drive any further.  After I suited up to wet wade and took a short walk, I started noticing some splashy rises.  The caddis hatch was not heavy, but the stain and extra shot of water had the fish comfortable and up off the bottom taking whatever they could get.  That makes two of us!  A little extra flow, some stain to cover my approach, the place to myself, and some bugs?  Game on.

Worms and bugs and that brown bit of nothing.

I was rigged with a CDC tag fly on the anchor and a pink san juan worm on the dropper, and both got eaten early and often.  Hard to keep track, but the pics show fish on Eric’s pink bomb (before I lost it deep), a single frenchie, and a little brown nothing hares ear that is my hot fly on this creek—I busted this one out for the last walk through pocket water, just trying to extend the morning with a few more fish.  This creek is one of those places that get pounded and the fish can get spooky and picky or go invisible altogether.  When I first got back into fly fishing heavily again, I fished it quite a bit because it is a wild trout stream only 45 minutes from home, and I often had to be satisfied with only a couple fish.  I have it much more dialed in these days and can probably catch a few fish on most days even if I must go with one small bug on 6X and creep around, but it is still a difficult creek on any given day. 

Plump worm eaters to start.

That challenge makes mornings like this even more special!  I bet I landed over 20 fish in four hours of fishing, and none of them were dinks.   It got warm and sunny, so the stain in the water was starting to light up with particulates—and that can be the end of things some post-rain mornings.  Even when it fizzled out a bit, I was still able to land a handful more in shady pocket water, and I quit on a fish, just to end on a high note. I was not even mad at the rainbows I encountered either since the browns outnumbered them by a big margin, and they were sporty and healthy bows to boot.

Let's hear it for the bow.

I landed a few good fish, from 14 to 16+ inches.  The best one I hooked took me for a ride and then broke the sj worm off the dropper when I tried to control him.  In looking at the pictures, the best one I landed may have been a long, long time holdover.  I don’t recall browns being stocked in this creek, and I can’t recall ever landing a stocked brown in all the times I have fished the creek, but this one had the look—few if any orange spots, sparsely spotted overall but silvery not olive from all that time away from the cement pond, and in the light I had to work with I did not see a blue eye spot either.  He did not know he may have been stocked, so I did not tell him.  He gave quite the protest about coming to net.  With the cold water, all the fish, especially those landed quickly as I am wont to do this time of year, were not the most cooperative during the photoshoot.  Humidity on the lens did not help either, so you may have to pair up the beauty of the smaller fish photographed later in the morning with the larger blurred silhouettes of the early fish. 

Some blurry plumper shots

I would have liked to have seen the one I broke off, as it acted like a brown, but I was not fazed when I lost him.  I was more concerned with quickly re-rigging to get back in the game, as fish continued to flash, splash, and make their presence known in other ways.  I did not expect this big one to eat the way he did, I think.  In reaction to the fish chasing emergers, I actually caught a couple casting down and across and letting the bugs swing in a riffle.  This pig hit during one of those casts.  The tight line could have been an issue, but I actually controlled that and was working to get the fish upstream a bit.  I just think the drag was a little tight for a fish this large on 6X.  A third run back into the deep just went *plink* and since he took it all, I can assume he ate an sj worm on the dropper not the CDC jig that the other swingers ate.

Stained and high for September but real fishy looking

After catching another fish in the back eddy of this same hole, I decided to move to a couple runs downstream of where I began the morning.  Eric lost a monster in one of these plunges in August, but the sun was up now, and I had already landed a big fish or two and had probably had my chance at true greatness too.  I did land half a dozen more decent fish picking pockets with one bug, first the pinky bomb and then a size 12 frenchie with a chartreuse hot spot.  I even landed a more browns and a couple rainbows as I worked my way through the holes where I stopped first thing in the morning to address the risers.  That activity had stopped, but the fish were still willing to eat, just deeper in the water column.  The sun was hitting this stretch and sending my long shadow across the water if I was not mindful, so I decided to make a move after rigging to fish some shallower and bouncier pocket water upstream that would be in the shade for much of the way, even at this hour of the morning.  It was about 9:30 AM, I bet.

Not all blurry shots this morning once I noticed....

The last time I fished here, and the time I fished with Eric before that, this section was pretty dead.  I worked hard to dig out some dinks last visit, but they were replaced by a handful of 8 to 10 inchers this morning.  The stream runs heavier here, so the storms definitely moved some gravel and smaller rolled stones around.  At this hour and brightness, the fish were not spread out in the flatter spots but concentrated right in the plunges.  They were active, at least, and up off the bottom still.  Most took a little brown hares ear on the dropper in size 18.  One that took my anchor fly took it immediately, and I even caught one on the swing at 10 AM in the morning, so the caddis emergence had likely appeared here too at some point.  

A few in pocket water to finish the morning.

Based on the size, I think I made the right choice in starting where I did, but there are a few large fish in the deepest pockets here that I would have liked to have seen earlier in the morning too.  The shade helped keep the water from getting too murky for them to see my drab bugs, but as the creek turned again, and I was back in the sun, I had to work really hard to find one last fish to end on.  The last two were really beautiful in the sun (and dehumidified camera lens) so I took a couple pics of average fish just so you and I could appreciate them.  The last few trips were tough, but this was a good one!

Another beauty to end.