July 2, 2021 – Stayed Chocolaty for a Long Time – Wissahickon Creek

Not prime conditions, but a good day to wet wade and wet a line.

The rain was exciting, but not after another heat wave.  In other words, it was not a day to target my trout friends in 68 to 70 degree water temps, although I am not promising Saturday or Sunday are off the table with the cooler day and night on Friday and possibly more rain!  To mark instead the end of this second heatwave of June, I took a walk around some old haunts on the mighty Wissy this morning and scared up about ten small smallmouth on a sculpin with a black bugger trailing about 18 inches behind.  I also landed a few sunfish and a couple rock bass, and all the fish seemed evenly split between the black and the olive offerings.  The sculpin did more damage in the riffles where visibility was just starting to improve at 1:30 PM when I quit.  Black worked on the swing in deeper pockets.  With the mud hanging around way too long, for the duration of my stay from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM, in fact, it was not on fire by any means, but it was good to chunk a streamer and have something jumping on the end of the line.  Wet wading was also nice, as the humidity continued even if the temps stayed below 80 degrees.

A number of smalls ate Eric's sculpin or a black trailer.

I still have not heard cicadas around my house, though I mentioned I heard them in Berks a while back.  That creek is like bathwater now and best left alone.  Curious about the Wissy, I stopped an older couple who looked like regulars and asked if they’d heard them in the park this summer.  They said no, but I still plopped a pattern down in some likely spots under trees before I left today.  No takers, not even when I added a weenie on a dropper, but it was about noon when I decided to change it up for a while, so that is not prime time by any means.  I hope to get out at least one day this weekend for trout before the heat returns, maybe even one adventure next week.  The boy is off from summer camp this upcoming week, so it could be a camp dad excursion as well in the canoe or wet wading the Big D or something, some fluke? Stay tuned, yo.

Chocolaty enough at 1:30 PM still to need a black bugger in water over 18 inches deep.