May 18, 2024 – A Good Day of Terrible Fishing (for Me not Josh) – Mifflin County

Josh hooked up in a nice riffle.

I met Josh through PAFF and have been communicating with him about some of his local creeks for a while.  A couple of these creeks, I have been learning more on my own over the last few years, branching out beyond the usual suspects a short drive further west in crowded Centre County.  He is also generous enough to host a bunch of old fly fishermen at his mom’s property on the banks of the Juniata River each year, so I got to meet him in person early last fall.  He helped my learning curve by giving me two spots that weekend where I had a solid afternoon of nymph fishing (also in the rain).  We finally made good on another meet-up this morning, and I got a tour of some of his favorite stretches on the bigger creek and another off the radar limestoner.  Thank goodness he was on his home waters and fished well today, despite the fish being pretty dickish for most of the day.  Without Josh’s performance, and his own pats rubberleg variation, you would be seeing a lot of dink rainbow and brown pics for this post.  I started out fishing poorly and really never got any better as the day progressed.  More snags and lost bugs than I care to count, hanging casts in trees, wrapping tippet around my own ankles at one point, nearly taking a dip while rushing up to photograph one of Josh’s trout just so we had content for this blog.  I even targeted a big rising fish, got him to eat, and then snapped the fish off with the hookset.  Add bad knots to the list of my foibles today.  It was good to connect again with Josh, and I had fun trading stories all day, but I probably need a do-over on the fishing.  It happens.  I know I have had rough starts with Sam after the long ride to State College on little sleep, but I usually recover.  Not today.  I struggled for the duration today.

Rainbows and dink browns for me at spot one.  A few fat fish early for Josh.

Josh and I met up at a spot close to the first stretch of river he wanted to fish.  I would guess we were suited up and fishing by 10 AM.  I was not complaining about leaving the house at 6:30 AM, not 3:30 AM, my usual when I head this way this time of year.  Rain fell most of the ride, but it stopped a couple hours into the fishing at the first spot, so meeting later in the morning kept us much dryer, for sure.  The potential extra sleep did not help my performance, unfortunately.  Fishing started out good, with Josh landing a couple plump wild browns.  I was thinking we were going to have a solid day, even though the flows were up and the river pretty stained.  I was the stocked rainbow warrior for a while before I finally stuck a few small browns on the walk back up to the parking lot.  Fishing shut off pretty quickly, so we made a move to another spot on the same creek and soon pieced together a possible reason why fishing had shut off.  The gage on the creek had been dropping for a day, but on a hunch, Josh pulled it up on his phone and showed me the graph rising again.  The second spot was nearly unwadable at this point, nearly.  We gave it a shot for a few minutes, and then decided to fish another creek that was smaller and in a different watershed altogether.

Josh continuing to school me at my own game at creek two.  Even a better beard today!

On a tip, I had explored this creek once before, but I did not really fish it, just walked it making notes for a future visit.  Growing up in the area and knowing folks, Josh had a legal parking spot and a legal ingress/egress for this otherwise pretty private stretch.  This creek is sort of like fight club, you don’t talk about it.  I know the Centre County dudes had a few of these before the dreaded Keystone Fly Fishing book, but I also know they still have a couple left.  As you know, I like to keep lesser-known spots quiet, even (or especially) if they are not my own.  It was a good-looking creek in places, but the most exciting part was that the color and the flows looked much more promising.  I was even hopeful that I was going to be able to shake off my bad mojo today—I still don’t know what it was, allergies, work stress, just tiredness?  Josh took time to rig up to fish a bugger on a fly line and even took the time to rerig back to a mono rig to continue nymphing.  He caught fish on both, a few decent ones too.  I don’t think I even capitalized on him being out of the game to rerig on occasion.

Some nicer fish ate the streamer and the rubberlegs.

I caught some small wild browns, but nothing close to the size that Josh got to eat his pats rubberleg.  The pics don’t do justice or perhaps the dreary light all day had an effect, but they were pretty and very healthy wild browns.  For whatever reason, I resisted putting on my own big stonefly imitations (I was even carrying a few rubberlegs) and even after finding success with a big size 10 and even 8 jigged pheasant tail a few times, I kept going back to smaller confidence flies.  Heck, I should have thrown a bobber AND a rubberlegs.  That may have been a nice accommodation to help me get back into form for a while in the afternoon, a confidence boost, perhaps.  I did none of that and just kept grinding away.  Snapping off a big trout did get under my skin a bit, so when Josh suggested we hike out around 5:30 PM, I knew I was heading home not looking for one more spot to fish!  I may need a do-over in June.

On the other hand, my average browns today on a pretty crick.