June 6 and 7, 2024 – The Silver Fox Gives Me a Reason (Sort of) to Take off on a Thursday; the Boy a Reason on a Friday – Lackawanna County and Central PA

Tom and I gave it a shot on an odd weather day for early June.

Tom had vacation time planned for this week, and we have not fished together in a while.  I forget why I could not join him the last time he went on a successful brookie hunt, but I knew we needed to get out this week, so I cashed in some PTO.  I gave myself a nice long weekend by booking a college visit with the boy out in Union County for Friday.  The weather has been terrible for trout fishing, of course, and even the river bass were squirrely during the brief visit my son and I made to the WB of the Susquehanna after lunch that afternoon.  We had hot weather and over a week without significant rain—or possibly any rain depending on the region of the state.  I was hopeful that we were going to get some promised storms on Wednesday and Wednesday evening that might help the cause, but in the region Tom and I fished on Thursday, it only gave a slight stain and zero bump to the normal to low flows.  I also think the fish had lockjaw based on the impending thunderstorms, a South wind, and low pressure because even the mostly small trout we did catch barely ate with few exceptions.  It felt mushy and swampy, even wet wading.  The water temps were fine, and we quit shortly after lunchtime, but nothing really ever materialized.  It felt less humid for a brief moment on Friday morning before the same pattern returned, so I hope some relief is coming this weekend.

An early, swampy start.

Tom has seen pictures of me holding up multiple fish in the twenties from this creek, and I have even written about how it has yet to disappoint me over the years I have been learning it.  That ended today, of course, on a day where I was hoping to put the Silver Fox on some quality fish.  I expect small trout to dominate catches this time of year, and that was one reason I suggested this creek.  I assumed based on previous June experiences that we would tangle with many fish and have action all morning, even if the average size was 8-10 inches not 14 to 16 inches like I’ve experienced several times in early spring and late fall.  We may have landed 15 trout today, maybe.  I caught one that was 10-11 inches and one that was 12-13 inches.   The rest, and all of Tom’s unfortunately, were 5 to 8 inches!  Technically, this was not even a dinkfest since even they had lockjaw and required perfect casts to elicit half-assed swipes at the bugs and fast reaction times to hook them.  One and done too, which is often a sign they are feeling off.  My experiences here, including slow starts that ended up turning hot and heavy by late morning, kept me confident and kept us moving and covering different types of water.  I worked Tom out a bit, so when he took a little refreshing plunge around noon, he had an excuse.  I took my own dip at like 6:30 AM, so my only excuse at that time was clumsiness!  Tom drove, so I could not even blame the long drive this time.  It was so warm and humid our clothes are probably still wet.

The kind of day that makes a 12-incher a star.

We made good time and were fishing slightly after 6 AM.  I showed Tom some honey holes that produced nothing, but I remained positive that something was going to materialize at some point in the morning.  I stopped at a shallow riffle in between holes, just to prospect since my plan was to target eager fish in riffles as the main event.  We got the skunk off us with a couple dinks before once again finding no willing eaters one favorite hole after another.  After taking a break at the parking spot, we retooled for what I had imagined would be the main event and fished a stretch of pocket water I was confident would make our morning, as it has done many times in the past.  As recently as April of this year, I not only landed a 21–22-inch pig in this stretch but also put together a catch of likely 20 fish between 12 and 16 inches.  Not today.  Tom got a few little fish in prime spots, and mine were not much better.  Imagine getting excited and snapping photos of a 12 incher and a 10 incher!  That’s how small the average fish had been before I landed two decent fish at the end of this stretch.  

And 10-incher a co-star.

We backtracked and got a couple more willing dinks to eat before finding a spot to hop out so we could take a ride to one last stretch, a last-ditch effort before noon to catch a few more fish.   I turned one decent fish with a hookset in this stretch and Tom got 1.5 small fish in the net and had his swim during this walk, so it was hardly the day-maker I was hoping it might be.  This particular stretch produced 25+ small fish and an 18-incher for me one June not that long ago, but this was an odd June day, an August day in June or something.  The stream has been getting warm each afternoon, it seems.  Add to that the low pressure today, and any fish worth a damn was hunkered down awaiting better days.  Disappointing, but it was good to get out with Tom and show him this creek that he has only vicariously seen through my visits.  Were he not off today, I may not have fished, and were he not with me today, I would have ground out an even more long and difficult day.  It was good to have a second voice of reason along to confirm my suspicions that this day felt done within an hour of our arrival.

Clouds building once again over the Susquehanna Valley.

Friday weather was more of the same after a promising cool and less humid start.  Clouds, humidity, and a convection wind built as we toured a fancy college campus in Lewisburg.  The boy and I had a great lunch downriver in Selinsgrove and found an awesome thrift store to shop before making a very brief visit to a park along the West Branch of the Susquehanna.  I threw a couple spinning rods in the back of the ‘Ru in the morning just in case we found good access to the river or even lower Penns Creek.  He had plans at 6 PM at home, so we could not really do more that 30-60 minutes of prospecting.  Instead, we ended up having a 15-minute speed round—first or most fish in 15 minutes wins cash or at least a free thrift store hall.  We saw a channel cat and no other life.  Still, it was a good day with my son who will be leaving me next year for one of these fancy colleges, places this first-gen mitch would have never considered.  I am pulling for these rural places near awesome fishing, of course.  He’ll probably end up at NYU or something!