May 11, 2023 – A Stockie Trifecta but No Gold – Wissahickon Creek

A lovely morning in the big city.

I fished from about 8 to 10:45 AM this morning at the local crick, just a little deeper in the better conditions of the City.  Eric caught some fish down the street last week, but I have a feeling it is getting warm close to home.  A water temperature reading where I was fishing at 9 AM was a solid 60 degrees Fahrenheit, so I am hopeful that the fish here will live on for a few more weeks if we are lucky.  It was a nice cool morning to fish today and a cooler week overall, too.  The temperatures close to 90 on Friday won’t help, but there are a lot of fish left and cooler temps on the way for the weekend, maybe even some rain.  The creek is very clear and getting lower, but there is now shade a lot of the day and still deeper places to hide.  Selfishly, I would like to get a couple more shots at them, just to get out in the morning on a weekday before tackling the day’s work.  I did see another guy with a spinning rod upstream of me about 400 yards, but I spent most of my time nymphing some pocket water, which was very productive, maybe more productive than the one deep run and hole that I fished before I quit.  I probably landed 20+ fish and dropped a few too because I was lazy about retying when my dropper tag got too short….  Oh, the lazy luxury of catching a mess of stockers and not caring if they get off!  I think I only netted two or three just to get a picture or two or three.

Caddis imitations two ways and a sampling of three trout varieties.

I was tossing a caddis larva on the anchor and a size 16 CDC tag fly on the dropper, and both got eaten about equally.  There are midges everywhere, so I am sure even smaller bugs would work, but there are enough caddis around that they must be eating those natural bugs too.  Midges would probably get destroyed by the local sunfish and bass.  I caught a couple of each, but the larger bugs likely culled out most of the panfish.  When trout are eating, I sometimes ignore hits that occur when I land in the slower pockets because I kind of know what they are by the telltale rat-tat-tat.  The trout were definitely eating this morning, especially from about 8 to 9:30 AM before the sun lit up the clear water.  I spooked a couple monsters left over from the tourney, and there are several palominos visible to all who care to look in these low flows.  I tried to get one this morning to complete the set, but I had to settle for the rainbow, brookie, brown combo instead.  A couple of the browns look really good, especially the smaller ones, and the smaller fish are right up in inches of water when actively feeding.  Most were happy and feisty, with plenty of jumps and runs, but a few were sluggish enough for me to take the water temperature, which was totally fine, as I noted above.  I did not overstay my welcome and was driving home by 11.  Maybe a bigger adventure on Saturday if the weather cooperates.  Right now it looks like mainly clouds and sprinkles.

Many of the stocker brown stocks have been getting nicer looking over time.