June 1, 2024 – All the Rain this Spring Spread Those Stockers Far and Wide – Brodhead Creek

Not a bad start before 6 AM.

Man, I committed to fishing the gorge section of the Brodhead today, which is a lot of work, even more so at 750 CFS on the Minisink Hills gage, and I caught a ton of rainbows, even stocked browns.  The banks are steep, having once been railways and/or elevated roads cut into laurel-choked hillsides on both sides.  So, scrambling down to a honey hole, only to find you can’t wade it can be demoralizing if you let it.  I just committed to the exercise today in hopes of finding at least one really nice fish, but the stockers, most of them small survivors, were more challenging at times than the scrambling and climbing.  Oh, I caught some wild browns, including a few solid ones, but I really had to work for them.  I caught at least seven other wild fish, too, these of the fallfish variety.  I am not sure if I found a honey hole, or if they were staging to spawn.  Because of the higher water and a stain, I could not see the spawning mounds if that was the case.  A few of those fallfish were big too.  I was hoping for a smallmouth a couple times, but the fallfish fight starts out strong and ends really quickly sometimes.  I have heard people say they fight better than trout, to which I say: you play with yourself😉

The Fallguys: now a major motion picture...

After five fallguys in a row, I took a water temperature reading, and it was still 64 degrees, so fine.  I put in a good 8 hours of fishing and hiking today, so this was at 1 PM.  With caddis going nuts, I ended up fishing until 3 PM, getting trout on the swing even on my second shift after a short break, so conditions were very good for trouts today.  The last few days of cool mornings and some rain stand out from a couple heatwaves, however, so the river may be getting rather warm some late afternoons.  For the last three or four days, the gage was showing under 65 for a high temp each afternoon, which was a major reason why I gave it a shot, perhaps before it was too late this spring.  A sure sign of consistently warm water in some of these spots is the presence of feeding smalljaws.  None tangled with today.  The gage up in Analomink was under 200 CFS, but that drains a different ridge and does not have a larger secondary and a tertiary tributary draining into it, either.  

An early start in good flows and good water temps.

I landed a really nice brown on maybe my second cast, and a great holdover rainbow not long after that.  As the pics probably show, I was fishing before 6 AM as the sun was rounding the valley, smoke remained on the water, and a couple of juvenile eagles were on the hunt.  Flows were just iffy enough when I made my first crossing at a tailout I know like the back of my hand that I was cautious about wading into a favorite spot that actually produced for me later in the day, as flows continued to drop and the water cleared a bit more.  Before that, I tried two different ways to approach this spot and abandoned both.  Bushwhacking through knotweed on a 40% incline was option three, which I did not attempt.  Probably for the best since that growth hides a couple encampments for the unhoused.  A friendly enough dude wished me luck in the afternoon after I had made a successful approach to this spot.  He was making runs up and down the knotweeded slope filling his water bottle with Stroudsburg Water Authority punch, which I hope he boiled two or three times.

A lot of small browns and rainbows as the payoff for a lot of hiking and climbing.

In the gorge, I made a few waist-deep wades in order to get into position in a couple of places where I have tangled with or landed big wild trout in the recent and ancient past, but in a few spots in further, I had to be content to perch on a boulder and sling a bobber into the current seams.  All the fallfish and most of the afternoon rainbows came on a big old pheasant tail or stonefly imitation under the bobber.  Caddis were hard to ignore, so after a pleasant enough hike back in the shady but buggy woods, I decided not to quit.  I had a snack at the ‘Ru, drank an iced coffee, changed into my sexy Shelta boonie hat for the extra sun coverage, and vowed to wade into the honey hole where I twice failed this morning.  Either the water had dropped another 25 CFS or more, or I was being a punk this morning because the wade up AND back were not all that bad.  Some of the rolled cobble migrates here each year, and I have not fished this section since the fall, so maybe I was just being appropriately prudent.

Arguably the beauty of the place alone is the payoff, but nice wild fish help.

This wade was worth the extra time, as I had a blast catching fish actively eating those caddis emergers.  A pink tagged CDC soft hackle on the dropper got pounced on several times on the swing, so it became the pattern for a while until the action petered out.  Mostly bows again, but a couple gorgeous wild browns were in the mix this time.  Again, I was wondering if I had been too cautious with the wading, especially when I found the exit wade upstream pretty simple, but the gage still shows a steady descent today.  I had been fishing for 6 hours, so the flows probably did drop at least 25 CFS while I was there—that’s a summertime Valley Creek subtracted from the flows, so not insignificant. 

Some bonus shots from a long day of fishing.

I did not wade further down to the next couple of holes that often produce good fish, hopeful that another week of normal temperatures and maybe even some rain will give me another shot in the next week or two.  I have plans to fish somewhere with the Silver Fox on Thursday, and I am heading towards the West Branch of the Susquehanna with the boy next Friday, so maybe some more trouts and even a few of those smallmouth bass that the fallfish briefly fooled me about.  One thing not up for debate: those river bass certainly put the fallfish AND the trout fighting abilities to shame.

Not the prizefighters some claim....