March 17, 2021 – Before the Rain and Cold, a Couple of Fun Hours – Northampton County Limestoner

A nice way to spend a couple hours.

I kept running out of real estate today.  I arrived at this creek around 1:30 PM, and where I wanted to park and begin fishing was populated by another ‘Ru with a telltale TU decal and a PFBC truck tucked in behind him too.  They were nowhere in sight, and I could only hope that they were together talking to a landowner about taking down riparian buffer to the detriment of this suburban creek!  For all I know, though, one was fishing and one was doing license checks.  I never saw them because I drove to another spot that holds one vehicle not two and began fishing further upstream.  Thankfully, I had a productive run of 6 trout, at least two of them nice fish, in an unoccupied 400 yards of riffle, run, and pocket water before I ran into a guy chunking a spinner.  We talked for a minute but gave each other space, so I did not run into him again until I was about to leave for home.  He had scored a nice fish from a hole I wanted to target (and first) so I was not surprised that I could not raise one out of this hole when I reached it.  When I last saw him, he was trying a hole that I had not taken a fish from and was hoping to try again, so I was not surprised that this honey hole did not produce either.  Despite being hemmed in and hamstringed, it was a good short outing.  I drove 45 minutes to fishing 120, but I do that a quite a lot, and I had to be online for a class at 6 PM anyway.  When I write Northampton County Limestoner here, it can be one of maybe 5 creeks, but a couple of them have become my NW Valley or NW Wissy over the years—my home creeks when I need to fish for a while and not plan too much, just point the ‘Ru and go.  Until opening day, a lot of creeks are off limits, but in my book these outing beat chasing stockies in a DHALO or FFO and are worth the 20 extra minutes of driving any day!

Bomb walts and a riffle nymph picked out among the olives.

It was cloudy, so there were some olives in the air and even some risers in a long flat.  I was throwing a bomb size 18 walts on the point, really as a way to get a smaller baetis pattern, like size 20, down closer to the bottom.  The fly is just a marriage between a flashback pheasant tail and a thin profile/fast sinking fly like a perdigon or frenchie with a CDC tail.  It usually works when olives are popping and has this month, but I think it only scored three of the smaller fish this afternoon.  Instead, the two biggest fish, one a nice 15-inch fish, took the walts right in the current.  I was excited to pull three fish from bouncier water and was expecting a run of pocket water upstream to be even more productive than it was, but it only scored three more small fish—though not Valley small, mind you!  I ran into spinner dude after that, so I contemplated taking a longer walk below my parking spot, but decided to get home early instead and actually eat before class not after.  I probably made more sense as a result.

About half of them were decent small stream fish.

This might be it for me as far as fishing until the weekend, as I have meetings and appointments, but Thursday sounds very wet and Friday cold and windy, so this afternoon was pretty perfect despite the minor inconveniences.  I am still not used to seeing so many people out fishing on weekdays, but it is to be expected even more now that spring is around the corner.  To get out for a few hours and land some small stream beauties is never a bad thing, so this has been a decent week overall.