 |
| Some trouts after a long, heat-enforced hiatus. |
I knew when I hooked my first fish today, on my third cast, and she took a leap and started digging, that I had made the right call. It was the first trout—an average spring holdover rainbow, granted—in at least a month. I will take what I can get this summer. I knew conditions would be good after some rain and a week of cool evenings, but I confirmed why the fish were so cooperative this morning around 9 AM, when I hung my thermometer in the water for a sustained break and it came back 59 degrees F! Happy fish and a happy mitch. Not that I don’t like bass on the fly, but I just don’t do it enough to have a rolodex of spots, especially land-based spots. I am heading out to Mifflin County next Friday for bass, but I was really happy to catch close to a dozen trout this morning. I even caught three browns in this Class A wild brown trout crick. Go figure.
 |
| Mostly bows, especially to start. |
The air temperature was below 60 F when I stopped at a Wawa on the ride up, so when I arrived at the crick before sunrise, I was already in long sleeves and a buff to help combat the impending shrinkage I would be experiencing while wet wading this morning. It was manageable early and quite a pleasure later. I planned to fish until about 9 AM, but I ended up fishing my way back downstream. Not only did I catch a couple more fish, but I stayed out until 10:30 AM before calling it good. Tricos were still high in the sky, and I thought about waiting them out, but I did not want to be a glutton. My one regret was not fishing a dry dropper with a big terrestrial. I had another rod in the ‘Ru, but I grabbed the nymphing rod and mostly concentrated on pocket water. I did catch a few in dry fly water with a single small bug and 6X tippet on my micro-mono leader, but I am pretty sure I could have had some fun on the surface this morning too. Maybe on Sunday if I can drag myself out of bed again....
 |
| A single small bug on 6X in pocket water did some damage |
Most of the fish took an olive perdigon or, after I noted the trico duns early and switched up, a single 18 frenchie. I landed most of what I hooked, but while in pocket water, I jumped a couple other decent rainbows that came off the small barbless bug. There is a lot of algae on the rocks, so they definitely dragged the tippet through some stuff when they got below me. I kept hoping to find a better brown who had snuck up into the skinny riffles, but the best brown this morning was probably 10 inches. I landed two others that were a couple years old, and they were in the places I was willing a bigger brown to eat. No matter. Like I shared earlier, I was just happy to catch some trouts, so the wild boys were a bonus. I may (or may not) do this again tomorrow at another Lehigh Valley limestone-influenced creek before the 90-degree temps return.
No comments:
Post a Comment