June 22, 2024 – Tigereye Joe Puts Us on a Great Evening of Rising Fish – Lehigh River

Joe out there on a hazy Saturday showing us how it's done.

I think I do this long last waltz every year, claiming each trip in July (or June this year) is my last one until the fall.  It’s sort of like a band like LCD Soundsystem selling out a few farewell nights at the Garden and then coming back the next year with an album.  Sorry.  I just have a rolodex of possibilities, and a growing network of dudes who know a lot more than I do about their home waters.  Case in point, I met up with Joe and David from the PAFF forum this evening at one of the only games in NEPA at the moment.  Even with a dam release for whitewater enthusiasts today and tomorrow, Joe knew the timing of a nice window of dry fly fishing on a beautiful night.  Not only did he guide us to the spot, me following behind on the unimproved roads Deliverance style, but he nearly dialed in what the majority of fish were taking on the surface.  We never totally figured it out.  We still had some refusals from these picky sippers, but enough of them ate his gray caddis, which he shared with all, to put together a solid evening of dry fly fishing.  As you know, that is something I have not done a lot of in the last several years as I have worked to “perfect” my euro-nymphing game, but I may have shared a couple times that I am coming out the end of that journey and hoping to do more traditional fly fishing again.  An afternoon and early evening of mostly cooperative stockers in a beautiful setting with a pair of good guys is a good first step in that direction. 

Hot in SEPA, less so in NEPA.  Nymphed a few.  Deliverance?

I can cast accurately still and present a drag-free fly, but I don’t have enough patience or knowledge to sit there and figure out picky fish.  That is a skill and also an experience thing.  We saw midges, some sulfurs, a random iso- or two, but the fish wanted a caddis we could barely see—or those midges: I was close to putting on a Griffiths gnat, Joe a bivisible, just to test the hypothesis. A sparse size 18 gray caddis that became increasingly harder to see in broken water as the sun set was close enough, and I like catching more than figuring stuff out, so I just went with catching one out of every five that took a look.  Before committing to the dry fly, I did catch three fish nymphing pocket water, but I am not stupid.  When Joe began catching fish pretty consistently after several fly changes to break the code, I went back to the ‘Ru for my dry fly rod.  I caught a couple on a bigger tan caddis, got refusals on a sulfur, before taking Joe up on his offer to fish with one of his bugs.  Dave also had a couple fish on the bigger dries, but he too had more success going with Joe’s bug.  Joe put on show on his home waters, of course, but I know I had over half a dozen on the gray caddis after I committed to this path, so not a bad night.  There may have been one small wild fish in the mix, but most were small to average stockers.  We landed the trifecta of bow, brown, and brookie.  I think my first nymph fish was a stocked brook trout, and my best bow took a nymph, too.

Got a few to take bigger bugs, but Joe's 18 gray caddis performed best on picky sippers.

A couple bigger, splashier risers were across the river, but that was a lot of work for a refusal.  I tried a couple times and had splashy misses.  That prompted me to put on a bigger dry, even a dry dropper for a brief time, but I just kept coming back to the small caddis, especially while watching Joe consistently land one every few minutes.  It was a relaxing evening, and I was reminded of the pleasures of the slower pace of dry fly fishing.  I am usually “go go go cover water.”  Tonight, we fished the same pool for a few hours and picked away at fish the entire time without breaking a sweat, and we got to talk and laugh a bit too.  The thermometer in the car said it was 100 on the way north, but it was 82 F streamside when we first arrived.  Besides sitting in a pool, wet wading a tailwater was a cool way to spend an evening. Joe has offered his former hunting cabin (RIP) in the past, and we have stayed in touch for some time.  I often get his intel on his home river, as he lives three or four miles from the gorge.  I knew he was a good guy, and it was nice to meet Dave too.  He is a California based angler that put some vacation roots down in NEPA because he loves the terrain and the different types of fishing.  I totally get that.  I personally love NEPA and PA fishing in general.  I have spent a life here in PA and have yet to exhaust the possibilities.  Joe is retired for good now, so we will make this happen again, and I am looking forward to it.  Water temps were 61 to 62, so if we get a reprieve from the heat, at least at night, I may not be done after all.

Joe and Dave out there making things happen.