August 24, 2022 – Tried to Change It Up for a Better Chance at a Particular Piggy – Northampton County Limestoner

Hatched a plan that involved a black sharpie and not much sleep.

Yes, those are Rapalas you see in the collage above!  No, we really have not had a rain to justify tossing a streamer or a big plug.  So why, then, the change of approach?  Well, the last time I was on this stream, I had a beast roll on a micro-bugger just before sunrise.  I have seen this fish or a pool-mate before.  It is a big fish.  Anyway, the area where he, or they possibly, live is not only a bit shady to fish at night, but it is also nearly impossible to get a backcast in even in normal light conditions.  It is just too deep in spots to allow much wading, and a rollcast is disruptive AF in flat holes.  So, besides taking a black magic marker to a CD 5 and another Rapala suspending slashbait that rides a little higher in the water column, I also planted a seed in myself to arrive at this creek in the dark the next time I visited and try to land a pig.  It has been a while, both since I have caught a pig and since I tossed the Rapala with purpose.  I did try to get the boy on a big fish this spring at another spot, and I surely took a cast or two, but today I was going to try it for real.  Oh, I had the fly rod with me, and I caught half of my fish today while nymphing with a 16 frenchie and a 20 perdigon on the dropper, but I also caught a few average fish on the plug, even one average wild brown on the suspending plug well after sunrise.  I did not, however, even see a pig in the low clear water.  I had a couple tentative (i.e. smart) short bumps in another big fish spot, but those could have been last year’s YOY for all I know.  The browns I did catch were only a couple years old.  The bows were looking like they needed more food.  The water temps were great though.  As a result, I fished until after 10 AM for the first time in six weeks or more!

Did fall back to the fly rod for the rest of the morning.  Fish were caught.

I stalked through some dubious industrial environs to my first spot using the phone flashlight, and I made my first casts before 5:30 AM.  I spooked no vermin, mammalian nor humanoid.  When the first fish hit, I was really excited—visions of my target fish or a cousin in my head.  It was just a stocker rainbow all hooked up from rolling in the net.  I remembered then, in the dark, to remove the front treble and pinch down all the remaining barbs on the CD 5.  That likely allowed the second fish in the dark to get off before a photo, and the wild brown later got off because I was standing on a high bank crouching and reaching down to net him.  He was all of 11 inches, but better than the few others I did land on the perdigon later in the morning—a little too big, obviously, for the long-distance flip into the net too.  When I worked through this stretch with disappointing but at least novel results, I took a water temperature.  It was 62 degrees!  Yay.  That prompted me to walk back to the ‘Ru, which had not been broken into or towed or anything, and grab the fly rod for a possibly short round two.  It ended up being another couple hours of nymphing because the water temp at 10 AM was still 64 in this stretch of creek.  I had some fun landing a couple little wild browns under an indicator in a deep hole, and then I landed another in pocket water before taking a decent holdover rainbow who had tucked her head up under a plunge.  The water was too low in my estimation to check on a couple other spots I had in mind, especially in high sun, so I called it good at 10:30 and headed for home.  I have considered heading out on Friday, but this dog day fishing is a lot of work for minimal pay.  Rain might inspire me?

August 12, 2022 – Still No Real Rain but at Least a Cool Down Made for a Pleasant Morning – Little Lehigh Creek

A pristine predawn beauty.

I had very low expectations this morning, and because it was a Friday in the summer I steered clear of the obvious spots, but I managed to land five trout during the early shift, including a couple on a micro bugger before sunrise.  In fact, the first fish I caught, the only wild brown, required the flash on my phone in order to document its capture. I also fooled a really beauty rainbow on the micro-bugger a few minutes before official sunrise.  The water temperature was still hanging up around 64 degrees, even after a cool night, so it took what felt like no time to hit 66 around 10 AM, which is when I decided to call it good.  Besides the pair of bugger fish, I got one rainbow on a size 14 stimulator dry.  The remaining two took a size 18 waltz tied off the hook of the dry fly.  For a while, perhaps too long, I tried every trick I had in me hoping to fool a very active rainbow in one deep hole.  The thing was 18 inches and showed herself at least three times.  I thought she might be chasing emergers, and then maybe I thought she was harassing fry of some kind, but it got too late and too sunny and warm to give the final experiment a legit try.  She may have been eating scuds or shrimp free-swimming at the edge of a weed bed.  I was purposely fishing near a spring, even to get only 64 to start, so there were a couple rafts of weeds in the vicinity.  I never did figure it out, not this morning, anyway.  I did fool a 19-inch brown in the same hole last year on a walts, I believe.  This was definitely a bow, though.

Low water, a little male? a dry fly eater.

It was a beautiful morning once the sun got up.  A little North breeze dried the wet wading pants in a matter of minutes.  I fished the stocked trout water as a way to avoid the trico chasers, and I even explored some new stretches that may or may not be open to fishing.  They were not posted is all I can say.  Not that mid-August is prime time for such exploration, but I can assure you that I did not find a secret honey hole loaded with all those wild browns and rainbows that are becoming scarcer in the pressured areas.  I did catch two bows today, and one last time too, that had all the markings of a wild fish.  Even the tail on the second fish I caught this morning was perfect and showed no clear signs of regrowth.  It was a long and skinny fish too, like many of its browner kin, not a corn-fed plumper that escaped from a cement pond and had an atrophied peduncle from an involuntary crash diet.  There is no way to know really, but I do think I have seen a slight uptick in wild rainbows in the SEPA limestoners.  I heard on good authority that they can adapt and fall spawn, again like their browner cousins, instead of spring spawn.  I am fond of browns, but when a rainbow is wild or at least thinks he or she is, they are hot fish.  Even in 64-65 degree water, they don’t even quit in the net.

One wild brown in the dark, ducklings eating those scuds, a "loved" stocker.

There were a smattering of tricos, but the handful of rises I saw this morning looked like opportunistic rises to terrestrials not steady sips.  Nothing developed that made me feel the need to clip off the stimmy and dropper, and the water got too warm for my liking too fast, especially with such low flows.  Fish are not taking refuge in riffles, which are really shallow right now.  Instead, they are sort of doing the winter thing and going deep once the sun is up.  The last two trips out, however, I have seen enough predawn activity in tailouts and flats to entertain a night trip or two.  Keeping my options open, I also rigged up a couple bass rods last week, and the boy wouldn’t mind heading to the beach, either.  The water temps in the surf were ridiculously chilly this week, but that may change.  For this morning, though, this was almost enough.  I would have liked one or two more fish to eat the dry, or for one of my walks to reveal a honey hole hidden in plain sight in some suburban backyard, but it was hard to be disappointed with just being outdoors this morning after the previous 10 or more days of pretty swampy conditions.

August 3, 2022 – A Brief Communiqué from the Dog Days – Northampton County Limestoner

The early shift in August.  Bows never quit moving.

I did get out during another cooler window early this young month, but with no rain to help, it was pretty beat.  The water temp below a spring was 64 F, so a very short window.  I was dressed and wet wading by 5:45 AM, however.  I think I landed 3 rainbows, and I messed with 3 more fish before I quit at 10 AM.  After nymphing some riffles and pocket water with small bugs, I actually had the most action, if not success, with a small, jigged streamer.  This was one of Eric’s that I have shown before: hardly any paint on the head, getting ratty, good mojo, and apparently now a dull hook.  I believe I sharpened the hook once or twice since its debut months ago, but my half-hearted digging around for a hook hone today came too late.  When I lost a bow and an average wild brown after one leap, I rationalized it as user error or dickish fish—as they can be in these dog days.  But when a much bigger fish rolled on the jig with anger, and it came off, and then another fish that I stuck while fishing upstream on a tight line also came off after one jump, I finally admitted that this little bugger needed some attention.  It is possible that the hook had even bent out a hair, and I did not notice, because it felt sharp enough to hold the last 2 fish at least!  Oh, well….  Nothing would move for a larger bugger with brand new hooks that I tied on when I couldn’t find the hone, but I did nymph and land the 3 rainbows before I quit—one on the swing, which did not develop into a pattern, sadly.  Not great, but it was fishing in August.